Near Barrett’s beach-front grog shop,
midwifed by Maori, Thorndon is born.
Fed from Atiawa’s kumera patches
swapped for handkerchiefs, axes
blankets, sealing waxes.
Along steep Lilliputian lanes
dwellings play drunken piggy-back.
Beneath washing lines bannered with bedding,
moleskin trousers, flour sack shirt,
children and hens pick in the dirt.
Clydesdales haul barrel-stacked drays
to the Shepherd’s Arms Hotel where the ostler
fills nosebags with chaff and bran.
Carters and coachmen talk harness and leather
or the state of the weather
and pot-holes to bury a man.
Reeking men fresh from the whale
hard by the hogshead supping warm ale
with Daniel Plunket fireman-sailor
John James Cameron constable-jailer
Septimus Tuckwell gentleman’s tailor.
At Tinakori’s premier house
Vogel holds garden parties.
Under limes and Norfolk pines
provincial hucksters barter
their votes for railway lines.
Wakefield’s transplanted
class cross-section
meets antipodean rejection.
colonial antibodies conspire.
‘We’ll have no squires
of Thorndonshire’.
Under Tinakori’s loom, rich rubs with poor
the washerwoman’s steamy cheek
by king Dick Seddon’s ample jowl
wealth and poverty hide-and-seek
hardship always on the prowl.
© Jack Perkins December 2001
