The poems by Kimo Armitage bring alive Hawai’i gently: through effortless descriptions of the rain and honey creepers, the mist and breadfruit. It is a intimate portrait painted by one who is most familiar with the landscape’s myths and realities.
Haliʻa Aloha | Remembrances
Kakuhihewa’s Oʻahu Beholds
Kakuhihewa’s Oʻahu beholds
The woman of the heavenly mist
The woman of Kalimukele sits
With her filled calabash
The star, Keawe, shimmers in the lofty heavens
Casting a light on her face
She is adorned with the anise-scented fruit
Giving greetings to Laka, the deity of dance
Glance toward the Kilihune rain
That dampens the leaves of the breadfruit and pandanus
Majestically, the ‘Āpuakea rain reaches toward Mololani
Relax to the enchantment of the honeycreeper
For you is this affection
A name song for Noelani
There is a Fragrant Garland
There is a fragrant garland
Whose fragrance blows in Kapahulu
An unbound honey-creeper feather
Floating on the fringe of the moon
A beloved scent
Keonaona is a child reared by birds
She has arrived with love
As the Malanai breeze blows
You have claim to the heights
In the well-trodden trails of Niolopā
Niolopā of the feathered warrior
A source of desire
Recollect this moment, when obstructed
Observed by the beach-goers of Kaloko
A name song for Mailekaluhea
Translated from the Hawaiʻian by Kimo Armitage.
Kimo Armitage draws upon the rich stories of his youth spent in Haleiwa, Hawaiʻi, where he was raised by his maternal grandparents. He is the winner of the 2016 Maureen Egan Writers Exchange in Poetry administered by Poets & Writers. Armitage published his first novel, The Healers, with the University of Hawaii Press in April 2016. He was also a co-editor of Aloha Niihau, a collection of narratives told in the Niihau dialect of the Hawaiʻian language.
*****
Read from translations: