Baggage

I’m imported from an Old World of atavists
and anti-hijab jabs from prescient presidents;
continent of all-conquering currency.
My plane disclaims its Eurocargo on lava tarmac.
We’re ethnic riffraff, scraps scraped off a plate. Wide-eyed,
I salivate at all this ripe-to-colonise space–

I drool like Conrad
when he saw the necklace-lain Congo jewel.
Every Mangere mangrove here should move
aside so I can stake my Tricoleur til I’m secure
I heard the settlers changed
their name to New Zealander or Pakeha

From European: such insurgency! A slap, a speed
hump, but it can’t stump the rules of retrospect
which state that history, if sealed, congeals, and cannot
be contested or repealed. So, I lug my luggage with me
In case I must declare identity.

The hotel shuttle is a quarantine. Each passed pub’s
a Celtic, Welsh or English embassy, but
I’m excluded from the hubris,
I’m just noxious ambassador
for Ferdinand, Wilhelm, Windsor, Louis.

Decamping here, establishing my principality, I seed
elms, firs, chestnut trees, appleseeds.
I hug the oaks, all damp and England-old;
I clutch a pocketful of francs.
I long for the Louvre, thirst for the Danube.

But, needing residency, I slide my Heineken aside
and drink a Steiny, let my tongue absorb the way you talk:
accent of parrots, cheese, beaches, wheat, and frosted skis,
And islets, quad bikes, estuaries;
ANZACs, Allies swathed in Swanndri,

Baled hay, udders stuffed with curds and whey
Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay, manuka tea. I swallow
spiteful eyefuls of the Sky Tower. Downunder Eiffel.

I obfuscate my origin, I carry mere inflections
on my tongue. My flag, my baggage can be boxed,
unlocked upon May Day,
Queen’s Birthday, Bastille Day,
exhumed when they’ll ask me: Mate, ya Kiwi?

And my mouth’ll empty.
No rugby fealty or passport can talk for me.
I’ll search my carried baggage, check the mirror.
Then we’ll see:

Croatia, Polynesia, Asia
are connected by a common sea
Uninterrupted by nationalities. Europe was a squeeze
So this refugee begs residency, because you need
my exotic biscotti and without the expanses landed in the Treaty, people like me
wouldn’t have room to breathe.