The Great Wellington Gas Blowback

Varying voices, as if many different speakers

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We heard the Gasman's speech today.
He told us all we know.
But, like an old friend, he faded out
as the gutter began to blaze

"Many thanks for this financial year
to our team of professional farters
and, last but not least, our
irrenumerable suppliers of cabbage."
The most natural gas of all.

When I stood on the top of Mount Crawford
electrical gas burned blue
And that is how I knew
they had not changed to natural gas.
I made a mental note to fill my primus.

The gallivanting bulldozer
dug itself down in a hole.
It's Dig the Unduggen Day, it thought.
It couldn't climb out again.
The sheepskin-lined exhaust pipe
is certainly appropriate.

"The Wellington gas has been blown back.
The Works are regrettably smouldering."
They tell us, Boil gas before consumption.

When we took our cat
to the rooftop wintergarden
the barmaid wouldn't serve him.
He was under 21.
Why not? It's a municipal crisis.

See the spider mark upon the road?
This, said the guide, is where the gas blow back.
It blew in blue, and it blew out black.
"As the gasworks will consume
they continue to consume.
In many ways a record year for gas." There's a ring of red volcanoes
round the Canterbury Plains.
Far into the night they glow
forging hatred and vituperation.

They must have seen the knot, we think.
The gas must have turned on itself.
The hole was all around them
but they couldn't find the hole.
They more they dug
the less they found the hole.

Midnight fleets of unmarked trucks
cart dirt to confidential destinations.
Every half hour, on the hour
we gather round the radio
and listen for the news.

Two years they took
to dig the hole,
three years to fill it in again.
Their spotless trucks
supply the earth.
They're going to dig the hole again.

My name is Nancy Browne.
On Labour Day, 1970
I switched on gas: it burned
for two days and a night.

It ruined my meal, it burned so low.
When I went to fetch it
it was gone.
Our clock is fast.
We always miss the news.
But after the news they say:
The public are requested not to worry.
The flames are not as fierce as they might seem.
Things may soon be almost in control.

Nancy says they're looking for the gas.
Her neighbour told her: he's
the gardener at the gasworks.
No, she doesn't feel guilty.
Someone had to see it go, she says.

This marks the spot
where the gasworks are not.

Last night they quietly
faded away.
They blew themselves down in a hole
and never recovered, people say.

In this gas
is unnatural twined with natural:
Coniunctio, in a subterranean heave.

Grain did strain
against the grain.
Gas was never
the same again. Gas is purest in the dark.
Gas confounds us all.
The knot's embedded in the earth.
The more they dig
the less they find the hole.

Dennis List

DL performing this poem, Christchurch Arts Festival, 1973