MAUI’S FISH
And paving its hollow with blue-and- green [1]paua,
Paua, purple-and-blue in the sun as the shimmering water,
In the sea-water, bright as the sun.
“Can I sail in the sea-weed?” says Maui;
And a fine tuft of hair he set on it,
Thinking....thinking....
And twisted a stout line upon it—
And behold! there he ended his toil and his thinking together!
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughs Maui the Fisher,
And looks out to sea!
Late that night, when these Brothers, safe back from their fishing,
Wearied with toil, snug and rounded with supper,
Snored in the wharé,
Maui, the youngest, still hungry on purpose,
Alert and attentive—Hush!
Crept from the side of them—Hush!
From the warm wharé creeps out, to the darkness,
Out, to the cold, lonely beach:
Finds the canoe, and there, under the bottom-boards,
Ha! in he crawls, and lies close.
Huge is the night, and the loneliness gruesome and terrible,
Sharp howls the wind, the old Sea moans there over his shoulder—
As a widow, a mother, they wail, at a death, at a [2]tangi;
And the Darkness was dreadful all round, a deep darkness of Death!
44
