On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942
by Michael McLane
the photo is insufficient—
a crudely drawn-map
shows only what emerges from the depths
what hides within is obscured
here there be dragons, no
here there be silhouettes and mimics
there are only the hulking islands adrift, sloughed
from some distant continent of steel
full of flightless or unfledged birds
we do not see the sky
which is the same shade of grey
as the hull
we do not see the greens of gear
the shade of pine
the shade of gorse
never know of the splinter in your hand
from the dock end of the gangway
made of local wood and weather-beaten
your baggage, the unintended weight
is centre-stage
a black hole in the image
your face half light, half shadow, you
on the dark side of the moon
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First published in Dark Mountain.
Nathan Cook was the first American soldier to set foot in New Zealand during WWII.
nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/first-american-soldier-lands-nz
This is the first poem I wrote after my move to NZ in 2019. It engages with the strata of imperialism in NZ as well as the disorientation of someone far from home and perhaps well out of their depth. As my PhD work progressed, I continued to come back to it, taken by both its prescience for what the project would eventually become and its naivete (not unlike Cook’s own upon his arrival) about the history in which the new arrival is about to be immersed.
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MICHAEL MCLANE is the author of the chapbooks Trace Elements and Fume. He is an editor with Dark Mountain and Sugar House Review and was a founding editor of saltfront. He currently lives in Martinborough, Aotearoa/New Zealand and recently completed a PhD at the International Institute for Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington.