A Polynesian Rhapsody

I was experimenting with a style I hadn't tried in poetry: experience projection. Describing through somebody else's eyes, not your own. Writing as how they would have felt in a given situation. And I came up with this, inspired by "Pioneers of the Pacific" a recent article in the National Geographic Magazine (Roff Smith and Stephen Alvarez, March 2008) about an ancient race of Native Pacific explorers who discovered and colonized almost all of the hundreds of then uninhabited, scattered Pacific islands east of Australia, including Fiji, Tahiti, Easter Island, Polynesia, starting 3000 years back. Their daring voyages in those ancient times have been equated to lunar landings of 1900s in terms of their relative boldness at the time they were undertaken.

They used to undertake long voyages on their hand-built and hand-rigged canoes (no fossil fuel power 3000 years ago :) ), searching for new islands to settle upon. It wasn't like they were forced to move, or that there was pressure on the land. They numbered only a few thousands and the islands were way too many, nearly 300 in Fiji alone. They did it all just for the sake of exploring new frontiers. Researchers now say that one of the reasons why they were able to undertake such long and daring voyages was that they went against the direction of generally prevailing wind currents, so that even if they did not discover any new land, they could just turn around and the wind would take them back where they started from.
Eventually, in a 1000 next years or so, their descendants perhaps reached South America also, eastward from Australia.

So I kind of got inspired from the concept and the wonderful photography in the article and wrote something. It captures a particular moment in the life of two of these people---a couple. The man is setting out on an indefinite voyage to the sea, not knowing when he will be able to return, and even if he will return or not---because after all it's going to be him against the ocean. Here is what his beloved says to him before he sets out.

Go forth, mariner
The blue stretches to infinity
Discover a new paradise
For the two of us...

May the gods guide your way,
The heavens steer you right
And when your spot new land
Marked by towering banks of cloud
Beyond the dusky horizon
And billowing fumes from boiling lava
Oozing into the ocean,
May the guardian spirits
Protect your canoe from the heat..

But if you do not find it
Ride the trade winds back home soon
I'll be waiting
In our moss-hung cave beneath the cliff
Obsidian will shimmer
Vivid tropical blossoms will sparkle
In my soul
Getting a whiff of
Your intoxicating scent of the sea
Paradise wherever you will be.

*Obsidian is a kind of beautiful natural volcanic glass used in that culture for making ornaments and stuff.

This collage was complied by me for the poem.



The text of the NGM article can be found here.
Pics courtesy Google Image Search, Corbis and Stephen Alvarez for NGM.
Poem (c) Sanyukta, March 2008.