Rain by Hone Tuwhare

Rain I can hear you making small holes in the silence rain If I were deaf the pores of my skin would open to you and shut And I should know you by the lick of you if I were blind the something special smell of you when the sun cakes the ground the steady drum-roll sound you make when the wind drops But if I should not hear smell or feel or see you you would still define me disperse me wash over me rain Hone Tuwhare 1922-2008  Hone Tuwhare, one of New Zealand’s most celebrated poets, was born in Northland, in the Hokianga, in 1922. At age seventeen Tuwhare went to work at the railway workshops as a boilermaker. He became a fully certified boilermaker and a member of the union, where he was recruited into the Communist party. When the Russians invaded Hungary in 1956, he gave up his membership of that party. Tuwhare wrote his first poem when he heard that his father had died. He was already 42 years old when he published his first book, No Ordinary Sun, in 1964 - the first collection of poetry to ever be published by a Maori poet. The title poem makes clear his feelings about the effects of nuclear testing in the Pacific.  Tuwhare’s work has been called a mixture of working class language, the bible and Maori korero (narratives), ‘as if you are in church and in the pub at the same time.’ In 1999 Hone Tuwhare was named New Zealand's poet laureate.  He was a great poet, a warrior, a taonga. See the obituary published by The Times Miniature book by Dave Wood