Untitled Document

THE NEW CAPITAL

Nicholas Messenger

In the frosts of New Year, we call First of Spring,

the court officials came into our village in their fur cloaks,

with the shod hooves of their ponies on the frozen causeway ringing,

to proclaim our farms would be required for the new capital.

We marvelled at their greatness, who could, at a stroke

of brush, relieve the land of one year's labours. We believed them

though, and as the days warmed up our tools leant on the kitchen wall

all afternoon. The paddy fields remained un-flooded.

Then the weeds called back to mind the various seasons

of their own. They flowered in turns, turned brown, and then competed

in the ingenuity of seeding. Wild birds came down from the wooded

spurs and nested where they pleased where food abounded,

brought up chicks, and, swaying atop the heavy seed-heads

in the evening, sang their lives away. The pretty foxes pressed themselves

between the stalks, afraid of no-one. But the leaves have turned now

and begun to fall. The deer come through the yellow cane

and bucks call out their desolation. Still no-one has come to delve

the planned canals or build the promised palaces.

No pines with baskets round their roots await the gardens in their lanes

of bamboo palisades. The sound of wheels is just a creaking farmer's cart.

You hear no padding feet or shouting runners. In the villages paralysis

possesses us. That's not the jingle of a string of bells

but just the ring of an old woman's sickle striking sparks

off pebbles, as she gathers the wild soba for her bowl of gruel.

Nicholas Messenger has been a poet all his life, and a painter on and off. He won the Glover Poetry award in New Zealand in the 1970's, and has had a few small one-man shows of his paintings. For much of his life he has made a living as a teacher, of science, art, and languages in High Schools in New Zealand , and for the last nine years, of English in Japan .