Gregory O'Brien

from The Ailing Wife

'There was a new softness in the air . . .' wrote Malaspina, approaching Doubtful Sound, at the south-western end of New Zealand's South Island in 1793. He and Don Felipe Bauza, who explored Doubtful Sound in a rowing boat from the corvette Descubierta, were responsible for 12 Spanish place-names in the area. While the first European music heard in New Zealand is said to have been that played by English sailors on fife, drum and pipes in 1773, the first conceivable instance of a guitar being heard in the country was when the two Spanish vessels visited two decades later.

 

Punta de 25 De Febrero

It was stained as the sea was
stained

tannin-brown. A wintry forest
of six strings.

Sweetness, she stood on the pier
and passed me

the guitar. And with that
I was pushed

out to sea. I sailed latitudes
of frets, longitudes

of strings. I worked on my hands.
My nails

grew, fingertips hardened
and, this way,

I was restrung.

 

 

Isla de Bauza

So had it the talkative hands
with which I accompanied

myself. Slowly as we went
the instrument and I

out towards the horizon of
her ailment

that we might make
dry land again

on this ship I called
The Ailing Wife

sailing calmly for
the storm.

 

 

Islotes de Nee

The fair sea, she said,
the unfair sea . . . My wife had left instructions

for the playing of the instrument
in the worst of weather

come rain, typhoon or
waterspout.

But she had not prepared me for
the calmness, these most

unmoving of waters. Slowly,
as we went.



Copyright © 2008, Gregory O'Brien.

Gregory O'Brien lives in Wellington, New Zealand, where he is Senior Curator at the Wellington City Gallery. Born in Matamata in 1961, he is both a widely-published poet and a widely-exhibited painter. His most recent poetry collection is Afternoon of an Evening Train (Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2005), and his most recent prose book is News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore (Carcanet Press, Manchester, 2007).