Manukau Mall Walk

I came out of the Manukau City shopping Centre
doing the Manukau Mall Walk —
the shoeshine shuffle, the hotfoot floogie, the baby elephant —
doing the Manukau Mall walk,
to discover the Great South Road.
So, I said, Great South Road, where you headed?
A hikoi went past, marching for poetry,
marching to Mercer, Meremere, or the Coromandel.
A platoon of Hussars on horseback went past,
their plumed helmets galloping towards Verdun, towards Papatoetoe.
The Three Graces went past chasing aesthetic pleasure.
The Virgin in a Condom went past (saw you on the TV last night Madonna),
and I began walking along the Great South Road,
like a train of thought entering a certain state of mind.
As I walked, I recalled the aura of other more earnest eras.
I remembered the sepia photographs of the Colonial Ammunition Company.
I remembered the worm-eaten histories of the bloodstained ground,
under sprig-studded boots and kegs of legs in slanting rain.
I remembered those early explorers who pushed the boundaries out
into ever more mystic territories —
those explorers who navigated the fur and the dust, the tumbling
tumbleweeds, of the vast carpet plains of the empire of the frivolous.
I walked by horse troughs hurriedly filled with cut flowers.
I walked by closets of dark personal secrets.
I walked by gardens, where shadowy shrubbery
those explorers who navigated the fur and the dust, the tumbling
suddenly gave way to pockets of blazing light.
I walked by the mystery of a bridge wrapped in light,
the spokes of light a sunburst tiara,
beneath which whales swam to a radiant future.
I walked by grain and grape, by bread and wine, by Sunday to Sunday.
Winged yachts were dancing like sandalled Mercury
over the foam on Sunday;
sails burgeoned on the Gulf.
Some of us were elbow-deep in the kitchen sink,
others knee-high in vanishing Auckland,
there where the real yearns to be unreal,
and people are always much worse than you think.
Some were seeking the true identity of the land,
the original pristine quiddity smothered beneath layers
of modern modification. Was it to be found
in geology, or geomorphology, or did it lay
in the very mantle of vegetation, or in the profusion
of microclimates, or was its essence unknowable,
forever modified by the attempts at discovery,
the way an idea once dismissed as useless
one day suddenly gains currency
and moves out into the general population,
both changing and being changed as it goes?
By now I had reached Auckland, jet-lag city
jutting into the sky, town of dark towers,
town of cool waterfalls, deep atriums and skirted walkways,
town of smoothly efficient escalators and rocket fuel filling stations.
Town like a Las Vegas impersonator;
town where locks snick and razors draw blood;
where wristy whizz-kids are able to make timetables tick
and grandfather clocks chime and bong;
where fastidious bouncers obsessively address dress codes
before applying the disdainful cold shoulder.
Town of my birth, branded on the cerebellum.
How amazing that sense of optimism is,
filtering through the ozone of Auckland
to its blue spurs which glitter like a split-open geode.
How amazing that here where happy endings begin,
at the gateway to a South Pacific Fun Day,
the pōhutakawa is flowering scarlet as a maraschino cherry,
scarlet as the fingernails of Elsa Schiaparelli,
scarlet as a bonfire of old books
surrounded by bishops in soutanes sipping sherry.
Bible verses are ascending in blackened flakes,
whirling scraps of ash above Lord Concrete’s Domain.
Whatever next, whatever next, as the wind flicks over text;
flicks over characters from God’s hotel 
condemned by religious intoxication
to the delusion of ongoing happiness before their last merciful release;
flicks over medicine men quivering in their sleep,
doing a little light mall walking to a tune by Henry Mancini.
So, I’m out here, too, on the Great South Road
in this pandemonium under the basilica of stars, under the Hubble,
doing the Manukau Mall Walk –
the shoeshine shuffle, the hotfoot floogie, the baby elephant —
doing the Manukau Mall Walk.

David Eggleton
from  The Wilder Years: Selected Poems, Otago University Press, 2021

For a long while I was obsessed with trying to capture a sense of what it felt like to live in South Auckland when I was going to high school there, to Aorere College, and after, as South Auckland began to grow and transform. To me the growth felt organic and holistic and energetic, though in reality it was probably all about developers seizing opportunities as the population exploded. So this poem is made up of memories, disguised autobiography in a way, that are also memories of working-class South Auckland turning into Manukau City, into Urbanesia, and the bright new shopping malls with their air of optimism and calculation, but also there was another side to that: an air of drama and urgency, as city planners tried to figure it all out, funnelling and channelling growth. All a bit crazy, a bit absurdist, but papered over by Granny Herald and the other media of the day.

And the other thing is the exhilaration I used to feel walking along parts of Great South Road with the multicultural goings-on; the sense of unity. Much of that has been lost pretty much, or become something else, because the traffic has grown monstrous and snarled-up, and things seem more jaded and jumbled and isolated rather than unified. Or perhaps my perspective has changed.

But to walk into the CBD was a thing I used to day-dream about, travelling through suburb after suburb, each with its own atmosphere, its place in the class system, its history, its illusions, its characters, friendships and scandals and hopes for the future. So it os partly a collage of treks I made, back in the day. And beyond that there is the rhythm of this poem which picks up on the soundscape of urban Auckland. It’s a patchwork, a collage, a mural poem, held together by the thread of the Road. I like the fly-by, catch-as-catch-can quality: everything is grist for the great windmill of time and circumstance, and the clouds above.

David Eggleton is a poet and writer who, before settling in Dunedin, lived in various suburbs in Auckland, and went to school there. He is the former editor of Landfall and he has published a number of poetry collections, as well as a collection of short fiction and several books on Aoteara New Zealand cultural history. His stories have appeared in a number of anthologies, including Best New Zealand Fiction. His poems have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English. His most recent book is Respirator: A Poet Laureate Collection 2019–2022, published by Otago University Press in March 2023.

Favourite Poems is a series where poets select a favourite poem from their own backlist and write a note to go with it.