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Dunedin Public Libraries and the Dunedin Lebanese Community Present:
HE PURAPURA MARARA SCATTERED SEEDS
HE PURAPURA MARARA SCATTERED SEEDS
'Sunday' by Richard Langston
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'Sunday' by Richard Langston
Her voice comes up the line, jumbled at first
Then straightens out. She sounds like the past.
She lives back there now, back there
Where she laughs like a small girl,
Where her father takes her to the test cricket
And buys her an ice-cream at Lords,
To Wimbledon and the tennis,
Then, amazingly, the ship to New Zealand,
Where she stands under her summer hat
Ashore and midpoint in the heat of Ceylon.
(She’ll marry a sailor).
Those snowy South Island mornings
Where the water freezes in the pipes,
The beginning of a long line of daughters
And sons, and a mountain of white nappies.
She’s 90 not out – a fine innings her father
Would’ve said – and the same hands
That held the ice-cream, the ship’s rail,
Turned blue in the cold water of the wash-house,
That nursed her children,
Rest on the chair.
She’s seen so many come and go,
Those frail gauzy figures shuffling in the hallway,
She’s lived long enough to talk and hold hands with ghosts.
Today we escape all that – and wheel her to the coast.
She wears her flowery Melbourne Cup hat.
She watches the sea at St Clair,
And all of us are there,
Where we make – from this day - something new.
Her voice comes up the line, jumbled at first
Then straightens out. She sounds like the past.
She lives back there now, back there
Where she laughs like a small girl,
Where her father takes her to the test cricket
And buys her an ice-cream at Lords,
To Wimbledon and the tennis,
Then, amazingly, the ship to New Zealand,
Where she stands under her summer hat
Ashore and midpoint in the heat of Ceylon.
(She’ll marry a sailor).
Those snowy South Island mornings
Where the water freezes in the pipes,
The beginning of a long line of daughters
And sons, and a mountain of white nappies.
She’s 90 not out – a fine innings her father
Would’ve said – and the same hands
That held the ice-cream, the ship’s rail,
Turned blue in the cold water of the wash-house,
That nursed her children,
Rest on the chair.
She’s seen so many come and go,
Those frail gauzy figures shuffling in the hallway,
She’s lived long enough to talk and hold hands with ghosts.
Today we escape all that – and wheel her to the coast.
She wears her flowery Melbourne Cup hat.
She watches the sea at St Clair,
And all of us are there,
Where we make – from this day - something new.
Photo
Family
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Dunedin Public Libraries (5th May 2016). 'Sunday' by Richard Langston. In Website Dunedin Public Libraries. Retrieved 27th May 2026 10:42, from https://dunedin.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/200016