Maori Language Week

I thought I would end our participation in Maori Language week with 2 poems. Beautiful words to inspire you to use some Maori phrases and encourage us all to pronounce our place names correctly. I have always loved this Eileen Duggan poem. Read it aloud. It won’t rhyme if you don’t pronounce Wairau properly. This poem was written in 1937.

The Tides Run Up The Wairau

The tides run up the Wairau
That fights against their flow.
My heart and it together
Are running salt and snow.

For though I cannot love you,
Yet, heavy, deep, and far,
Your tide of love comes swinging,
Too swift for me to bar.

Some thought of you must linger,
A salt of pain in me,
For oh what running river
Can stand against the sea?

And also

Pakeha Talk

When you said kia ora to me
For the first time – uninitiated, unsolicited…
It floated, and it was an object,
New, hard; it waka-ed and defined shores. 

You spoke an unspoken boundary,
Showing the terrain.
You bought a new map into the room
-the same size- more detailed,
In the kete of your kia ora.

Margaret Mitcalfe

Nga mihi na

Jane