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    James K Baxter  - Ballad of John Macfarlane and the Water Woman

    14/1/2016

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    Picture
    Ballad of John Macfarlane and the Water Woman
     
    Five hundred feet from the lakebed
    John Macfarlane sat
    With a bottle and a transistor
    In the shepherds hut,
     
    With a collie and a rifle
    And heard as the night came on
    The wind blow through the tussock
    And the water-course pour down
     
    For a fifty-year-old shepherd
    A fire of matagouri
    Whisky, dog and radio,
    Were too much company,
     
    Or so it looked. The music spun
    Like a rattle of dry bones
    (It could have been the Beatles
    Or perhaps the Rolling Stones)
     
    And suddenly Macfarlane knocked
    The noise box to the floor,
    Trampled it, and kicked [it]
    Clean out the open door,
     
    Finished the fourteenth bottle
    And let the empty roll
    And went to get another
    From the case beside the wall
     
    But in the open doorway
    A naked woman stood
    With her long hair wrapped around her
    And a keas’s eye in her head.
     
    The collie growled. Macfarlane grabbed
    The rifle from his coat –
    “Stand back,” he said ‘I’ll have
    No woman in this hut’.
     
    ‘Oh John,’ she answered,
    You’re making a mistake.
    I find it lonely lying
    On the bare stones of the lake;
     
    ‘Even a water goddess
    Gets tired of eels and gulls,
    I need a man to comfort me
    And take away the chills
     
    ‘When a boy came here from the Tourist Bureau
    I raised a flood for him;
    I dug him out of his camera van
    But the poor stick could not swim.
     
    ‘Then a man of the Ngati-Awa
    Drove his tractor down my shore.
    But he fell for a blonde at the Pembroke pub
    And I saw his face no more.
     
    ‘But when you broke the noise-box
    I knew I found the man
    To appreciate  a woman
    Who belongs to the water clan.
     
    ‘You’re strong enough to lie with me
    And grip the natural truth;
    I like the stubble round your jaws,
    I like your whisky breath.’
     
    She took one step across the room;
    The old dog howled in dread.
    Macfarlane raised the gun and put
    A  bullet through her head.
     
    One angry cry rang out, and then
    The wind slammed tight the door
    And there was nothing in the hut
    But lake weed on the floor,
     
    And while the shepherd lay dead drunk
    The floor-boards gushed out rills
    From the water-course that broke its banks
    From a cloud burst in the hills,
     
    And the next day John Macfarlane
    On the lakeshore with no shirt
    Frowned at the sun, his hair an beard
    Loaded with shingle dirt.
     ​
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      Hamish Ott. I am the Managing Director of Gotham Universal Limited (established 1998).

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