A poem essay about street beggars
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| Image: Canva |
she decants each day in cans
scans the drains for plastic treasure
trades lice and rats with lepers
raids the ruins for pins and tapers
clears the bins of tripe and crabs
plaits ducted cable to her tresses
drapes her scabs in spats of peat
scrubs the crud from her dresses
daubs the seats with lunar runes
pans for stipends with her cup
spiels and reels a descant tune
laces tea with beer and acid
her nightly sleep is lanced with pain
as spider bites redact her brain
and render essence of a past
so redolent of yours or mine
Felt Intensity, Keith Westwater (Mākaro Press, 2015)
When I was growing up in 1950s New Zealand, the idea that society would allow people to live on the streets was abhorent to my pakeha (European New Zealander) parents’ generation. Our indigenous Maori population too, particularly those who lived in or who were still strongly connectected to their tribal communities of origin (iwi) were confounded by a society that could ignore the plights of community’s isolates. Strong Māori cultural values of family connectedness and care were pallisades of inclusion, not rejection.
This phenomenon of ‘homelessness’ as we now call it, is however, a misnomer. The notion of ‘home’ has attendants of family, heart and hearth, the nest. Their absence does not mean that someone does not have a roof over their heads or is not a recipient of accommodation care. Perhaps it should be renamed ‘rooflessness’, which more clearly suggests a person who lacks shelter and has no habitat that affords a right to food and to rest one’s head in comfort.
During my childhood, the safety nets of neighbourhood, church and family were not as threadbare or ripped as they are now. There was little chance that anybody could slip through a hole in the net and sleep rough for any length of time without being rescued by one of these agents of care. Communities prided themselves on the extent to which they looked out for and after our les miserables, our downtrodden, our disenfranchised. In those days, to take absence from society, one had to deliberately and literally ‘go bush’, in the tradition of the Man Alone trying to escape demons or deeds demanding a reckoning.
Even our left-leaning governments of the 1940s and 50s began funding construction programmes that assisted low-income folk into newly-built living accommodation. They were dubbed ‘State Houses’. Such schemes would have been regarded as decidedly communist in the United States, but our national character has a strong egalitarian streak, and there is no way back then we would have tolerated homeless beggars on the streets. We couldn’t understand why this acne present in American cities was tolerated or ignored there. It seemed there was more pride in making sure a dime was put in the tin cup than in retooling the foundry of social and economic conditions that forged the cup in the first place.
But I shouldn’t have been so smug about our nobleness in housing the homeless. Since those times and in the last 30 years, rooflessness has become endemic in New Zealand. I can’t remember when I first started seeing beggars of no abode on our streets. I began to recognise people who had nowhere to go at night because, like hermit crabs, they wandered town toting their worldly goods, stopping serially at rubbish bins to search for scraps, or scavenging cigarette butts from the pavements. In reality, though, street-visible beggars are only the tip of the homeless iceberg. Many others bereft of roofs use cars, tents, storage sheds, or garages as a substitute for accommodation that is fit for purpose.
New Zealand’s homeless probably became visible on the streets in the early to mid 1990s, which was a time that coincided with the start of 9 years of right-wing governments. (To be fair, they had followed on from a supposedly left-wing government that veered violently away from its worker-party roots and carried out savage market-driven economic and social reforms.) I don’t think the right-wingers could believe their luck at what they inherited. But then, like right wing governments always do, they focused on what could be pared back, not on what should be provided, on policies that played to their voter’s prejudices, not on principles of fairness, on redistribution of taxes but not incomes, and on fixing the pothole issues of the day, not on ripping up the roads to penury. The result was a steep rise in unemployment and poverty, and a spike in negative social and health indicators for the population at large. The promised trickle down of economic benefits, as always, defied gravity and flowed uphill to the rich.
My education in the state of homelessness in Wellington became more data driven when I started working in the heart of the city about 15 years later. I would walk the retail section’s ’Golden Mile’ at lunchtimes and count the number of beggars. They generally sat accompanied by their tin cup proxies outside luxury goods shops that catered for the cruise ship tourist market.
Today there are twenty-three
Dead leaves
scratch the city street.
The sky is light-weak,
wearing another winter’s manifest
on a sleeve
abstained by blue.
The street’s address
is solid Golden Mile,
where Versace, Gucci,
and Swarovski sup with
the Saatchi brothers.
It is voting season too,
the season of evasion,
sanitised reports,
lies disguised as promises,
squabbles about
deciles of squalor,
poverty, jobs, housing,
inequality;
during which
politicians will make
the brothers even richer.
On Golden Mile
beggars squat.
Today, there are twenty-three
between Tory Street
and Parliament.
Dead leaves
scuffle round their feet.
Felt Intensity, Keith Westwater (Mākaro Press, 2015)
The Bucket Man
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| Wellington homeless man, Robert Jones. Dominion Post (Newspaper): Photographic negatives and prints of the Evening Post and Dominion newspapers. Ref: Dom/1993/1223/1/16-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22312964 |
A homeless person in Wellington in the early 2000s was particularly emblematic of those times. His name was Robert Jones, which was ironic, because there was also a wealthy and powerful property magnate of the same name. Robert the monetarily poor was dubbed the ‘Bucket Man’ by Wellington’s citizens because of his tote, which he carried with him on his daily street travels. He was noted for giving away much of anything that was given him to other less fortunates living on the streets. He became famous when a photo of a portrait of him appeared in the local newspaper. The painting depicted him with a halo cast from a street lamp behind him, the pole of which formed a cross.
The Bucket Man died on the city streets he trudged in the winter of 2003, following a spate of particularly cold nights. His death caused an outbreak of compassion from the citizenry both for him (belatedly) and the rest of Wellington’s homeless. It also provoked a singularly uncaring response from city hall. The cold-hearted councillors focused on trying to prevent the city's nomadic homeless from trekking and sleeping on the CBD's streets. Yes, the Council twined to the right.
The Bucket Man Poems
(for Robert Jones, 1942 – 2003)
The Stations of the Bucket Man
1
One Monday, Mr Jones walked out
of his Tinakori Hill campsite
with his birth certificate
bank statement and will
knelt in the gutter
at the intersection
of Grant and Park Streets
and died.
2
He was an urban Man Alone
before he went bush in the city.
His mother said his downfall
was his (bleeding) sensitivity.
3
The artist who painted him
with a halo and cross
was asking us to reflect
on what we would say
if we met on the street.
4
He stopped daily
at the Golden Arches
buying coffee and a bite to eat
in lieu of loaves and fishes.
5
The stockbroker’s assistant
nearly threw him out
of the counting-house
seeing he was not a Pharisee.
6
From his portrait
he looks over the shoulder
of the businessman
who wanted to buy his burial.
Who does he think he is?
7
One Christmas
there was room for him at the table
but he declined
stopping instead on the porch
to chat about the garden.
8
When he gave Wellington’s poor
money and clothes given him
they were, for a while
rich beyond relief.
9
In church he placed in the plate
twenty dollars just given him
then said to his benefactor
two would do.
10
One cold night
not long before he left us
he rested in a bus shelter
and told a passing Samaritan
he was alright
and thank you for asking.
11
At his funeral it was said
how useful a bucket was
living on the street –
for washing at the public fountain
for carrying things in
for using as a hat
when God wept on you.
12
Blessed are Wellington’s homeless
for they shall inherit the earth
on Tinakori Hill.
Conversation at the Gates of Heaven, 30 June 2003
Let’s see now…Jones, isn’t it? Robert William, of no fixed abode, Wellington, born in Australia.
Yes.
Yes, yes, I have it now…. You’re the rich Bob Jones who lived it rough on Tinakori Hill and distributed property to the poor.
Yes. You’re not confusing me with another….?
No, no, we have you as having no earthly encumbrances of any note and no notes of any worth, but your constant gifts of donated items to the needy were noted.
[Embarrassed shuffle.]
Well, I must admit, they really fast-tracked you, didn’t they? I mean, you’ve only been gone a couple of minutes and here you are! Most do at least a little time in purgatory.
[Silence.]
Right! Right! Well, everything seems in order. Go on through and make yourself at home.
Thank you.
Hang on a minute! Who are you giving those sandals to? What are you doing with that bucket?
Situation Report, July 2003
- Mr Jones was a very private former public servant living on the streets of Wellington who scattered angst and guilt amongst the middle classes with his presence and politeness.
- In the days since his death, I have had no reports of real or apparent resurrections or insurrections and no incidents of small scale or wholesale conversions to the carrying of buckets in the streets.
- He will probably be remembered as a living parable of antipathy to modern city life.
- Only City Hall has been moved – as a precaution, I am sure – to ban the homeless from assembling or gathering together in his name.
Tongues of Ash, Keith Westwater (Interactive Press, 2011)
It is perhaps fitting that recently in New Zealand, state and local agencies responsible for responding to natural disasters have begun looking to formally incorporate iwi and where they live (marae) into their response plans, so that the displaced from disaster-affected communities can be quickly roofed and fed. Marae have already demonstrated their ability and unselfish willingness to do just that during and following major weather and earthquake events. Now we just need the values underpinning these community acts of rescue and care to become the bedrock of reforms upon which all of society's homeless can become roofed and fed. The country has, however, just elected a new right-wing government. I won't hold my breath.
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