Muroroa Truffles

       (Apres moi le deluge)


O France’s Gaullist government
    Of President Chirac
Has made it clear to us down here
    Nuclear testing’s back -


‘Don’t doubt I plan to detonate
    There’s nothing you can do,
When deep beneath Mururoa
    I set a bright flambeau.


‘In the sea depths of the basalt
    Under the coral cone,
I’ll boil bombe à la fricassee
    Within a pot of stone.


‘Elite commandos in dinghies
    Do ceaselessly patrol
Round the 12 mile exclusion zone,
    Round that petit-atoll.


‘We bombed the Rainbow Warrior
    Our frogmen played the prank
In Auckland harbour blew her hull,
    And so it was she sank.


‘We are a force upon the earth
    And Greenpeace contests it.
France I say is here to stay in
    Case you hadn’t guessed it.


‘O France’s pride is paramount
    Therefore I do no wrong,
 Don’t doubt I plan to detonate
    Vive la bombe! Vive la bombe!’


France fell before the Boche’s boot
    Which made of her a whore,
Chirac’s the New Napoleon
    He’s on the march once more.

---

Recent surveys show crumbling and fractures at the base of these coral sites posing the threat of ‘plutonium hot-spots’.
 

Pohutukawa of La Coruña

Wellington: A pohutukawa tree in
Spain has stirred debate on whether
the Spanish were the first Europeans
to reach New Zealand ...
    Sydney Morning Herald, September 22-23, 2001


Bark bearded, large as a mastodon, it
stands within its neat stone ring;
the pohutukawa at La Coruña, north western
Spain, capital of Galicia province,
(an early Celtic colony); memories growth five
hundred years back, holds secrets of
cartographers ornately in its curves; guessed
at trade routes branching Pacific latitudes,
El Dorado seen along the East coast
of Aotearoa - smoke moving behind olive
foliage off morning fires, smudged cove, inlet;
crowded pohutukawa bloom,
glowing with the first heat of iron that bleeds
heart-red, out into the rising daylight.

© Stephen Oliver.  All Rights Reserved.