Part 3 (2/2)

Yes, I was there too, that late Sat.u.r.day night after THE DUKE, riding the Kelburn cable-car up under the shadowy, Gothic pile of Victoria

University, where furtive as hedgehogs, we found a hand-hold to jemmy open an illegal window, fossick the disused office for carton stacked upon

carton, each one packed with indexed filing cards, meticulous references, NZ arcana, forgotten dialects, fables rare as moose from Southland,

obscure derivations, etc., incalculable musings of an idealist and dreamer (this he showed us) here lay the singular industry of a reverential scholar,

abandoned yet thirty years on, The Oxford Dictionary of New Zealand English first appeared, penned by an academic of that selfsame city.

We are the last of the witnesses Geoff, like the derelicts who took the sun sitting behind the Public Library, or sheltered in Pigeon Park, days long

gone (along with THE DUKE and THE GRAND HOTEL) a city newly syllabled, yet the light remains, much the same milky white and pale as stone.

Hotel Diligencias

In Veracruz dusk troubles with a scent of gardenias after the last tramcar pa.s.ses by, and the rocking chairs begin their small breeze-making on the balconied terraces between the family photographs and little statues.

The dancing couples revolve at an angle in the great brewery mirrors marked:

Cerveza Moetezuma

before the globes lighting the plaza die out at 9:30 pm sharp.

But this was Villahermosa.

Lightning burns like mescal in the throat of night.

The whisky priest skulks about the mountain roads where you are headed, at Chiapas or Las Casas, charging so many pesos per baptism in the illegal night.

With or without him thrive the false saints & miracles in these remote regions, pure homage to superst.i.tion.

O comfort of Poverty! O lie of Pleasure!

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