IN FIRES OF NO RETURN - James K Baxter

Photo - Babette Page

IN FIRES OF NO RETURN - James K Baxter

While bluegum fables burn
To summer's ash
In fires of no return
Above the farms and crying folds
That house the doom of flesh,
To Barney's pulpit rock I climb
Where the sea aisles burn cold
In fires of no return
And maned breakers praise
The death hour of the sun.
To wave and bird I open wide
The bible of my rimrock days,
To salt-grey ngaio boughs that cross
The forehead of the west,
To Venus' holy star who smiles
Upon the lives she cannot save,
Man, beast, bird, lover
In orchards of a spring desire,
Hermit old on his wintry pyre,
All flesh wound in the bright snare,
In fires of no return
Wrung by the power of the prince of the air.

My country fathers laid
Under angel and cold urn
In fields of silence burn,
From folds of ngaio and strong fern
Turn their immortal eyes on mine,
Tell me this day the world was made.
I hear in frond and shell
The voice of the drowned sailor
Tossed on the black bar, with the winy breathe
Shout from the feast of Cana.
How love has raked the embers of his death.
And hermit from a holy cell
I watch my brother
King shag dive
Down from his windy
Rock to the humble tide
Where the sea poor, old crab and limpet,
Sigh to the ressurrection thunder.
Among night dunes the moony lovers
In lupin shade far and near
Twined under Venus' carnal star
Mock the power of the prince of the air.
Their doomed flesh answers an undying summer.