Daily Poem: Reply to a Marriage Proposal ~ Irihapeti Rangi te Apakura
Reply to a Marriage Proposal
~ Irihapeti Rangi te Apakura
Translated from Maori by Roger Oppenheim and Allen Curnow
Don’t hand me over with a word, Toihau,
don’t give me to Te Keepa!
Isn’t it enough that people are talking
as far as the quicksands of Karewa?
I am a canoe cast up and broken in the big surf,
I am getting old, my love play days are done,
it will not be long before I dig my grave.
That is my path as it was yours, Paoa,
my ancestral path across Te Whakaurunga,
unbroken view of he burning island
Whaakari, the demon’s flames.
Here on the mainland, Hinehore’s lover—
She can forget her jealousy!
She shall have her husband,
I embrace him only for a while.
The lips are made to taste with
but the body is firmly held.
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