I have to make a little preface to this poem,
because there are two words in it, which I'm sure most of you
don't know.
They're not lost words.
They're Hawaiian words.
There are two kinds of lava in Hawaii.
One is like a frozen river, and you
can see that it was flowing, and then
it stopped flowing and hardened.
And it is called pahoehoe.
And then there's another kind of lava
that as it flowed hardened but kept flowing,
and it broke up into chunks.
And there are these great lumps of lava, heaps and rivers
of lumped lava lying around.
And that's called ah-ah.
The Hawaiian language is a little difficult for me,
because it requires a very strong glottal stop, which
I'm not used to making.
So this poem is called "Ah-ah."
And I should say there is another Hawaiian word
in the poem--
Heiau-- which is a temple made of lumps of aa
piled up together to make walls.
And in some places one finds them still along the shore.
And there is one other reference in this poem, which
I should explain, and that is Staindrop Church.
That's the church in the part of England, where Christopher
Smart always dreamed of going.
Where he thought he had an inheritance,
and where he thought he would meet his next bride.
And so in his poem--
"Jubilate Agno"-- from which I've read,
he makes several references to Staindrop Church,
which still exists.
"Ah-ah."
"I know that pahoehoe is clear and hard.
As for myself I want to be ah- ah-
ah-ah, still tumbling after I've stopped, an opened mess.
Yes, I want to lift a cairn through seaspray
over some empty coast, to know the soft, brittle, crab-lice
fish clasp of ah-ah holding hands with ah-ah
inside the Heiau walls.
Oh, yes, it's true that pahoehoe is
the hoi polloi of the slopes, and I want to be-- ah,
me --ah-ah.
And I know the dismal shore is all made of pahoehoe.
I don't want to call ahoy ahoy and come sailing in.
No, I want to turn and gaze back where
we love in the bright moon, where
our kneecaps break and live."
Sorry "No, I want to turn and gaze back
where we love in the bright moon,
where our atoms break and live.
And even now the kneecaps gasp ah-ah
to the sweet stone of Staindrop Church and moan ah-ah.
Ah to the bones of the loved dead and ah
to the bones still staggering ahead of us in the mist.