Progress.

“This was bush once,” they said. “There were kauris here ….”
And suddenly I saw a monarch of the bush
In all its noble grandeur thrusting high Into infinities of light,
While the dwarfed rimus far below
trailed long green fingers
Through virgin veils of clematis;
Saw century on century the patient
climbing into etheric isolation
Where the sun clanged like a barbaric golden gong
On limbs imperturbable in their strength
To the savage strength of the onslaught;
Felt the mighty roots that supported like shoulders
The massive torso of the tree
Hungrily sucking the vitality hidden in
the darkness of the life-teeming soil,
Pulsing it up exultantly to the huge
limbs, the towering greatness,
Up, up into etheric isolation.
My heart cried out as I saw the monarch of the bush
In all its noble grandeur thrusting high
Into infinities of light,
Then saw it fall before a row of ugly
little shops with roofs of corrugated iron.
“This was bush once,” they said. “There: were kauris here.”
And spat upon earth whose richness had once nourished
The Majesty of a kauri.

—Una Auld.

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