Travelling Standing Still/Solar Myth
SOLAR MYTH
Maui, the dutiful son and great hero, yields to hismother's entreaty and adjusts the center of the uni-verse to her convenience. The days are too short fordrying tapa. He is persuaded to slow down the speed ofthe spider-sun with a lasso of sisal rope.
The golden spider of the skyLeaped from the crater's rim;And all the winds of morning roseAnd spread, and followed him.
The circle of the day swept out,His vast and splendid path;The purple sea spumed in the west,His humid evening bath.
Thrice twenty mighty legs he had,And over earth there passedShadows daily whipping by,Faster, faster, fast . . .
For daily did he wax more swift,And daily did he run The span of heaven to the sea,A lusty, rebel sun.
Then Maui's mother came to himWith weight of household woes:"I cannot get my tapa dryBefore the daylight goes.
"Mornings, I rise, and spread with careMy tapa on the grass;Evenings, I gather it again,A damp and sodden mass."
Then Maui rose and climbed at nightThe mountain. Dim and deepWithin the crater's bowl he sawThe sprawling sun asleep.
He looped his ropes, the mighty man;He whirled his sisal cords;They whistled like a hurricane,And cut the air like swords.
Up sprang the spider. Maui hurledHis lasso after him. The spider fled. Great Maui stoodFirm on the mountain rim.
The spider dipped and swerved and pulled,But struggle as he might,Around one-half his whirl of legsThe sisal ropes cut tight.
He broke them off, the mighty man;Let fall them in the sea.Where there had once been sixty legsThere now were thirty-three.
Maui counted them, and tookThe pathway home; and cameBack to his mother, brooding,—strodeLike a lost man, and lame.
The tarnished spider of the skyLimped slowly over heaven,And with his going mourned and moanedThe missing twenty-seven.
On with a hollow voice he mourned,Poured out his hollow woe; Over, each day, the sound of himBellowing, went below.
Maui saw the birds swarm upAnd scream and settle onThe carcass of the limping thingThat once had been the sun.
But still he thought at length to seeHis mother satisfied."Can't you put back his legs againNow all my tapa's dried!"
"The days are long and dull," she said."I loved to see them skim."Wearily, wearily, the sun shookThe black birds off of him.