Ancestors in the wood

Te Papa, New Zealand

Myself as a tourist, wandering and revelling in carvings and carved spaces. There are living marae and vibrant wharenui out beyond the wall of the museum. There are people who still sing to the waking ancestors. Te Papa is the National Museum of New Zealand in Wellington. It is wonderful

I step down to enter the Wharenui, respectfully barefoot, slipping in to sit quiet under the glaring eyes and tattooed bodies of carved, wooden ancestors.
 

NZ is full of ancestors

Watching people, it pulls us into silence, this place, into simply sitting. Children, laughing and babbling out there in the marae, leave their noisiness with their shoes by the door and, Maori, Pakeha and foreign tourist alike, all stand and look. No cameras. Just a moment of peace before they are called on and leave the strange hairy man alone again on the chairs.

For me, this place is full of presences and the shapes who have loitered on the edge of my senses since I arrived in New Zealand take form and I feel these short, green, tattooed bodies around me. I would like to dance a prayer here in a cloud of scented smoke but instead I find myself reciting poems and blessings out of my own far away lands*

Power of the raven,
Power of the rain on the hills,
Power of the wind over the moor,
Power of the hare in the grass
Be thine.

Grace of the clover,
Grace of the geese in the loch,
Grace of the gunmetal grey clouds,
Grace of the white clouds that catch the light
Be thine**

This wharenui is transplanted. A museum artefact, moved with blessing and permission and respectfully contained and even at this distance from its place of origin, I can sense the root that still links wharenui to marae and back to home. But what would it be like to stand in a living wharenui within a living marae while the voices of a strong and vibrant people echo round the walls and remind the carvings of their descendants and the families they gave life to?

*and later a Maori friend tells me that the spirits like to hear voices: that prayers (and poems) are gifts to them that help the ancestors stay here, with us.

** The lines come from a blessing prayer from my book “Old stones and ancient bones: poems from the hollow hills”. The final verse is an ending from a much older blessing
 

Brodgar
Slip into stillness
Beside a tall stone
Bristled and bearded with lichen.

Listen to the voices that 
Whisper along the wind,
Through the grass,
Out of the old stone itself,
Saying,

Power of the raven,
Power of the rain on the hills,
Power of the wind over the moor,
Power of the hare in the grass
Be thine.

Grace of the clover,
Grace of the geese in the loch,
Grace of the gunmetal grey clouds,
Grace of the white clouds that catch the light
Be thine

Stillness of the wave on the shore,
Stillness of stone in the Ring,
Stillness of sunrise behind the ridges,
Stillness of long sleep in the hollow hills
Be thine

Strength of the gull’s freedom,
Strength of the bull’s endurance,
Strength of the rooks’ gathering,
Strength of the crab’s stealth
Be thine

May no day be grievous to thee,
May each day be joyous to thee,
May love of each face be thine
May death on pillow be thine,
Honour and compassion.