Sad Joke on a Marae
Tihei Mauriora I called Kupe Paikea Te Kooti
Rewi and Te Rauparaha
I saw them
grim death and wooden ghosts
carved on the meeting house wall.
In the only Maori I knew
I called
Tihei Mauriora.
Above me the tekoteko raged.
He ripped his tongue from his mouth
and threw it at my feet.
Then I spoke.
My name is Tu the freezing worker.
Ngati D. B. is my tribe.
The pub is my Marae.
My fist is my taiaha.
Jail is my home.
Tihei Mauriora I cried.
They understood
the tekoteko and the ghosts
though I said nothing but
Tihei Mauriora
for that's all I knew.
--Apirana Taylor
...
Taylor's [poem] performs a moment of spiritual contact between a contemporary speaker and his
ancestors. [It] operates, in part, by situating its speaker on ceremonial grounds and evoking a
paradox of space and time. . . the speaker, Tu, is explicitly alienated from his indigenous culture
and unable to speak his indigenous language fluently. Standing on an unnamed marae (Maori
ceremonial space) before an unnamed whare whakairo (carved meeting house), he participates in
a paradox of space and time when the figure of the tekoteko (carving of an ancestor) offers Tu his
own ancestral tongue with which to speak in the present.
...
Taylor's first stanza deploys the names of five well-known Maori figures, legendary Polynesian
explorers and famous Maori prophets, warriors, and chiefs. The third stanza announces the
speaker's own Maori name, Tu, which can be translated into English as "to stand," "to fight," or
"to be wounded." The name can be read as an allusion to the concept of turangawaewae
(standing place) and/or as an allusion to the war god Tumatauenga. In addition the poem deploys
several words from the Maori language that are likely to be known not only to fluent Maorilanguage speakers but also to many primarily English-language speakers in Aotearoa/New
Zealand, including tekoteko (carved figure), Ngati (a term that designates the name of a tribal
group), marae (ceremonial space in front of the meeting house"), and taiaha (fighting staff).
Most prominently, the poem repeatedly deploys the formulaic phrase "Tihei Mauriora," which is
likely to be familiar to many readers in Aotearoa/New Zealand, whether or not they can translate
it into English. In a specifically Maori context this phrase is often used as a speaker's opening
move during whaikorero (oratory) on the marae; it can be paraphrased in English as evoking the
idea of "new life." Through the repetition of this phrase, which appears once in both the first and
second stanzas and twice in the concluding fourth stanza, as well as through the use of the
ritualized language of formal introductions in the third stanza, Taylor's poem emphasizes the role
of Maori language and public oratory in this representation of an enabling contact with
indigenous ancestors.
From Chadwick Allen, “Rere Kē/moving Differently Indigenizing Methodologies for
Comparative Indigenous Literary Studies,” Studies in American Indian Literatures
19.4 (2007) 1-26.
Taylor, Apirana. "Sad Joke on a Marae." Eyes of the Ruru. Wellington, NZ: Voice, 1979. 15.