The Mixed Trains Cross at Tahekeroa. ^*

With cool and laughing malice
The moonmaid tips her chalice;
A stream of silver spills
About the hooded hills;
And slopes (by day) of sleek green fields
Start into rows of tilted shields.
Tahekeroa lies below.
Its windows in a golden row.
We clanked and stopped; across the track
Of dimlit rails, a voice called “Mac”
“A saddle's here for Helensville
A dog for Ginger Smith, Woodhill.”
I watched the night enchanted scene
Dreaming of days that once had been,
When Maori fairies, fair of face
Filled the dark bush with tricksy grace;
And godly Maui, flaxnet spun,
With olden cunning, snared the sun.
Tawhaki's footsteps, far on high
Sent lightnings flashing from the sky.
Here where the cutting shows the clay
Dim glades of tree fern veiled the day;
And the soft tears of rimus tall
Fell like a lacy waterfall;
A leafy, secret, green cascade
Dropping where riroriros played,
Rippling a pool in gay delight,
Tiny bird-elves of black and white.
Silence, the world in her caress
Held sway in brooding loveliness.
The guard said “Not so long to wait
The 4.5's in, although she's late;
The drivers both change over here
And nose about their engine gear.”
I walked along the narrow space
To where a cheery torchlit face
Faded and glowed and sank again
Into the blackness of the lane
That ran between the two A.B.'s,
Squat behemoths upon their knees
Eyeing each other in the night.
Swiftly the vagrant furnace light
Flamed out and died; but I could trace
Another straining, earnest face;
Above the flooding tide of dark
Their glances met; they bore the mark
Of daily brotherhood and cheer;
The first words took this mystic form—
“The cross-head bogie's running warm.”
Beneath the faint amused high stars
The men bent, testing cranks and bars;
Intent, with calm relentless zeal
They peered at rod and plate and wheel.
The far-off crouching, silent heights
Seemed to watch coldly these queer sights:
These heavy things of steel and steam:
These men who knew no moonlit dream.
Tahekeroa's window eyes
Winked at me slyly, deeply wise.
For well they knew, and so did I,
How wrong were stars and hill and sky.
No Polynesian Long Ago
Could match this wonder; nor bestow
Upon the wrinkled, weary earth
A richer gift of primal mirth.
No turehu with magic wile
Had better wrought with fairy guile
A witchery of such delight
As those two goods-trains on this night.
For all their workworn fingers,
The spell of beauty lingers
In Mac and Tom and Bill;
And this is truer still
Blue dungarees and engine grime
Are worn by pixies, old as Time.

—O. N. Gillespie.

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