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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 4

The Jerusalem Years — 1969-72

The Jerusalem Years
1969-72

1969On 7 January JKB tells John Weir in a letter that he regards separation from Jacquie as inevitable. Soon afterwards he leaves for the Cistercian Monastery at Kopua in Hawke’s Bay where he makes a retreat. By the end of the month he goes to Jerusalem, walking the river road barefoot. He stays at the presbytery and meets some of the local Māori. After a few days he goes to Puhoi where he stays with Michael and Dene Illingworth. Michael once lived with Ngāpuhi in the Bay of Islands and now advises JKB about the prospect of his becoming acceptable to Jerusalem Māori. JKB returns to Auckland to stay with Hone and Jean Tuwhare in Birkdale. Hone arranges a job for him at the Chelsea sugar refinery. (One result is the poem ‘Ballad of the Stonegut Sugar Works’.) He meets Trixie in the Auckland Domain who invites him to share his home in Park Road, Grafton where a moving population of young addicts doss on mattresses on the floor. A night light burns to show that all are welcome. Trixie also services three houses in Boyle Crescent. After Easter JKB and Trixie move to No. 7, where junkies live. JKB meets people in the street or page 166at the Domain and brings them back there. Gill Shadbolt helps. The house is the target of police raids. (‘Ballad of the Junkies and the Fuzz’, dedicated to his son John, gives expression to his experiences at Boyle Crescent.) About July/August he moves back to Jerusalem. After a short stay he goes to Wellington to get permission from Mother Philippine, superior-general of the Sisters of Compassion, to use the nuns’ cottage at Jerusalem on a long-term basis. John Weir intervenes to support his request. During JKB’s Wellington visit he stays with his family and becomes convinced that shifting to Jerusalem is the right decision. He moves into the cottage there on 17 September. Colin Durning visits him. ‘Sonnets to Colin Durning’ (‘Jerusalem Sonnets’) are written this year. Publications include The Rock Woman, selected poems (Oxford), The Flowering Cross (articles from the Tablet) and The Day Flanagan Died (play).
1970Jerusalem Sonnets, poems for Colin Durning is published. In April Patrick Carey produces The Temptations of Oedipus. JKB is present when his father Archibald Baxter dies on 10 August.
1971In early January 1971 he meets Mike Minehan in Auckland. He invites her to join him at Jerusalem. In February he joins NgāTamatoa to attend an anti-Treaty protest at Waitangi. By May there is a shifting population of about forty residents in the Jerusalem community. Some stay a month, some a year. They are aged from seventeen to twenty-five. When Frank McKay asks JKB what he hopes to achieve JKB replies, ‘I give them my friendship and they give me theirs.’ He advocates ‘five spiritual aspects of Maori communal life’ upon which the community depends: Arohanui: ‘the love of the many’; Manuhiritanga: ‘hospitality to the guest and stranger’; Korero [discussion]: ‘speech that begets peace and understanding’; Matewa [contemplation]: ‘the night life of the soul’; Mahi: ‘work undertaken from communal love’. These principles are proposed in Jerusalem Daybook which is published this year. In late July he makes a great impression with his lively social criticism while addressing a youth festival sponsored by the Union Parish of West Dunedin. The buildings used by the community at Jerusalem are dilapidated and in April the Whanganui County Council demands improvements. Rumours are rife throughout New Zealand about free sex and drug-taking. At the beginning of September the Jerusalem community is closed down by the owners of the houses because of over-crowding. By the 7th only four members remain. On the 17th JKB announces that he intends to start a new community at Takapau in Hawke’s Bay. Late in September he returns to his family home in Ngaio. He enjoys his stay there but feels that he might become strangled by page 167comfort and moves with a group of homeless young people into an abandoned house at 26 MacDonald Crescent. In December Truth reports that the house has been condemned by the City Council. JKB and the other occupants are ordered to leave after a six-week stay. He responds in ‘Truth Song’. He moves briefly to another abandoned house in Macfarlane Street on Mt Victoria.
1972

In late February he is back at Jerusalem for the second phase of his community. By agreement with the owners of the houses it is limited to ten members who regard him as their adoptive father. In May he stays for several weeks with Eugene O’Sullivan at Newman Hall in Auckland. At this time O’Sullivan suggests that JKB write a commentary on the prison letters of St Paul. (This became the posthumously published Thoughts on the Holy Spirit.) On his return to Jerusalem JKB begins to write Autumn Testament, completing it by mid-year. He also writes ‘Confession to the Lord Christ’. In late July he stays with John Weir at Rochester Hall in Christchurch before going on to Dunedin for Impulse ’72, a youth festival arranged by the Union Parish of West Dunedin beginning on 30 July. At this time he is much affected by his reading of the experiences of the prophet Jeremiah, the misunderstanding and suffering he endured. Returning to Christchurch he gives Weir the manuscript of Runes, his final poetry collection (published by Oxford University Press in the following year). He also reads A Walking Stick for an Old Man to a gathering at Rochester Hall, and gives a poetry reading at the university, telling Professor Garrett afterwards, ‘I don’t think I am going to live very long.’ During his southern visit his spirit seems to be generally more peaceful, more realistic, somewhat rejuvenated by Pentecostal beliefs.

JKB stays briefly with family in Wellington, then returns to Jerusalem about the end of August. He realises that he does not have the energy to administer the community. He farewells the residents and moves to Auckland, to a community house in Carrick Place, Mount Eden, which is owned by Kathy. He is excessively thin, burnt out and disillusioned by the failure of his efforts at community building. Kathy identifies failure and panic in his expression. He remarks that he seems to need to receive greater amounts of love and care. He considers remarrying. For some weeks he visits a retired psychiatrist each day to talk about the fact that he had not felt loved by his mother when he was a child. He still attends Mass each day whenever possible. He brings people back to his Carrick Place address. Urged by Kathy he dresses a little better, trims his beard, and finds a job assembling electrical components. But he has been too long out of work and is soon fired. In early October he writes ‘The Tiredness of Me and Herakles’.

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JKB goes on a speaking tour to schools north of Auckland. On 13 October he attends a parish youth camp, taking part in programmes, but displaying little energy. On the 15th he returns to the Catholic presbytery in Whangarei where his former Wellington friend Father Jim Beban persuades him to write a reconciling letter to Mother Philippine of the Sisters of Compassion. On the 16th he goes to the Illingworths at Puhoi. He spends much of the time lying down. He complains of feeling very cold. Talking incessantly he says that a blend of Marxism and Christianity is needed to solve the social problems which are causing the plight of street kids in Auckland. On the 18th he asks Michael to arrange for a jazz band to play at his funeral. On Thursday 19 October he writes ‘Ode to Auckland’ at the dining table after breakfast. Later that day he returns to Auckland, to Carrick Place. He goes out to dinner that night. While walking home he has to stop frequently for breath. On Friday 20th he visits prisoners at Paremoremo, keeping up his practice of twenty years.

On Saturday 21 October he goes to Jean Tuwhare’s at Birkdale and asks if he can stay a few days. During the afternoon he works in the garden. He wakes on the morning of Sunday the 22nd complaining of chest pains. It is Labour Weekend but Jean’s doctor agrees to open his surgery at 7.30 p.m. During the afternoon JKB has a sauna in Takapuna with a friend of Jean’s. He tells her that he loves Jacquie but that his creative gift means that he needs freedom to move around. In the evening Jean drives him to the doctor’s rooms in Glenfield Road. She leaves, imagining that JKB and the doctor will talk for some time. He is to phone her when he needs to be picked up. The doctor wants JKB to undertake a full physical checkup but is told that he is too busy. There seems to be no sign of an imminent problem. The doctor is then called out to another patient. Just after he leaves JKB has a violent heart attack while standing outside the surgery. He manages to cross the road to No. 544 where he is admitted and lies on their sofa. Jean is phoned. She comes at once. Then the doctor returns. While JKB is being treated and spoken to by the doctor he has another heart attack. The doctor attempts CPR but JKB does not recover. He dies at the age of forty-six. The great stream of prose and poetry ceases to flow. On 24 October the Dominion newspaper’s street poster reads ‘James K. / Baxter / Friend. / 1926-1972’.

On 25 October his tangi is held on the marae at Jerusalem. Father Wiremu Te Awhitu, his old friend and supporter, celebrates the requiem Mass. John Weir concelebrates, along with other priest friends of JKB’s. Frank McKay gives the eulogy after Weir feels too upset to accept Father Te Awhitu’s invitation. About eight hundred people gather in this remote place up the Whanganui River to express page 169their feelings for the man who lived voluntarily in extreme poverty in the hope that his efforts and example would make New Zealand a slightly more loving, more compassionate, place.