Musical Buildings
You have been playing musical buildings while I
have been away, visiting the world. And you have
been laying landmines, subtle, fragrant explosions
hoisting me, as I walk your streets, into an original
thought—it is a cunning city. Not what it was, yet
nothing is forgotten. As a tree dies, another grows.
My library in Lyall Bay is given over to private use
but the magic door up to the free books is still there.
The Bank of New Zealand, opposite James Smiths,
is now a Burger King. James Smiths has absconded.
Wellington Central Library is the City Gallery, ok?
It’s the Botanic Garden, not the Botanical Gardens.
It never has been the Botanical Gardens. That’s just
what the locals like to call it in their whimsical way.
The National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum
are part of the Massey campus, I would swear they
had kept the linoleum if it wasn’t so patently new.
It squeaks underfoot with an eerie Proustian effect.
Wellington District Ambulance is now a wine bar.
The Public Trust houses Creative New Zealand.
Athletic Park has gone. So have the dangerous
playgrounds with their battering rams with which
we tried to kill each other and, mostly, didn’t succeed.
There was always one kid who would throw up though
if you kept on pushing higher while he screamed—Stop!
And there is the building still decked out as E. Morris Jnr
where I viewed my father’s bedizened body in his coffin
which now trades in coffee and cake as Strawberry Fare.
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins