New Zealand’s impermissible poet laureate composes an Ode for Winston Peters
The Dance of the Three Waters
So it came to pass in the Smug Hermit Queendom
the waters did turn greenish black.
Dank brine trickled from the fount,
and struck the High Court bilious,
and rushed they to the privy with gripe.
Lo, and when the nightsoil was collected
it somehow ended up back in the system;
a malodorous stream did seep most horrid
cross the cobbled lanes of Queen’s Landing.
And the skies opened, and it did rain,
just a tad, and the villagers did float off
in their coracles downstream and away.
Thence from the gloomy glaucous flood
did emerge a most wondrous sight:
the Taniwha of Local Government,
come to claim the effluvium.
But hold! On the banks of the foaming ichor,
galloped Lord Winston on his trusty steed
Zealandia, rusty sword flailing wildly.
Yea, and the Taniwha’s eyes flashed green,
as green as pounamu in the deep river.
The sewers belong to the people!
cried Lord Winston.
The sewers verily do belong to the people!
replied the Taniwha.
However subtle differences of process
did come betwixt them; and the strange customs
of our land require duel by press statement
to resolve such matters of honour.
Thus did the tribes of the Queendom gather;
the Lord Mayors clad in their crimson ermines
gyrated in the Ancient Dance of the Three Waters
on the sidelines, to add some local colour.
The pink non-binary unicorns cheered one side;
and the dwarves with chainsaws cheered another,
although no one knew exactly
what they were cheering and jeering for,
as the smoke billowed and sabres rattled.
And all the while greenish black water rose around them;
in a small Queendom with very poor plumbing.
Victor Billot has previously been moved to write Odes for such New Zealand luminaries as Brian Tamaki, Willis and Rawnsley, Dr Siouxsie Wiles, Duncan Garner, and Garrick Tremain.
