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JAMES K. BAXTER'S OTAGO WORLDS Lawrence Jones
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Page 9
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the memory of smoking the wild bees out of their hive in the rotten cabbage
tree 'beside the stagnant river' becomes an image of the Fall, its
treasure not the honey the child coveted but
. . . a nectar Distilled in time, preaching the truth of winter To the fallen heart that does not cease to fall. Many of the images from the town and the nearby farms are associated with loss and the Fall. There is the simple loss through Time, represented by ruined farms. One is the site of the farm of his great granduncle Duncan McColl, above Black Bridge, which bridged McColl Creek where it joins with the Otokia Stream to form the Brighton River. The first settlers saw in the wild landscape the possibility of 'release, eventual and ancestral peace, / Building the stubborn clans again', but the poet can now see only an overgrown orchard where . . . undergrowth Among stunted apple-trees coiling Trips the foot. Sods grass-buried like antique faith. |
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