Pipikariti - Charles Brasch

Pipikariti

Pipikaretu

Charles Brasch

Stone weapons, flint, obsidian,

Weed and waveworn shell and bone

Lie in mellowing sand with wood

Of wrecked ships and forests dead.

.....Lines 1-4 of 20.

Pipikaretu on Otago Peninsula has a wind-eroded archaeological site. Pipikariti was a form of the name.

- in The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse 1960 Ed. Allen Curnow, Penguin Books.

Brasch visited the beach often as a child, sometimes searching for Maori "curios" with his collector grandfather, Willi Fels. (Brasch, C. 1980 Indirections Oxford University Press, pp.18-19.) See Willi Fels Collection.