Leigh Davis was an important poet who died in 2009, too soon, and previously unpublished work is of great interest. This poem is a tender requiem for Louise Perkins, a close friend of the Davises. She was an art historian and art collector, which has perhaps prompted the repeated reference to ‘picture’. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when only 27, and two years later her illness was judged incurable. Defying medical predictions, Louise lived for another ten years until December 2004, ‘thin’ but ‘unable to be torn or broken’ thanks to her determination and her exceptionally positive attitude. Sweet Louise, a breast cancer support group, has been established in her memory.

Leigh made a deep study of Māori culture, as reflected in his book Te Tangi a te Matuhi. His poem alludes to many aspects of the mythology of Cape Rēinga as the leaping off place of spirits, such as the spirit’s walk along the coast to the meeting of two oceans, the volcanic (‘marquisite’) context, the pōhutukawa, and the spirit’s ‘half-turn’ back for a last look.

There is an important shift in the seventh couplet. (Leigh’s couplets are unrhymed but their sound texture is very musical.) The poem had begun with references to the weight of the world – to ‘masses’, ‘bodies’, ‘amplitude’, and ‘gargantuan trees’ – and also to colour – red blossoms, and Louise’s brightly handpainted wineglasses (‘Lolita’ is a brandname). But now the colours ‘fall’ away, as the ‘small’ figure on a ‘blind road’ will make her departure ‘weightlessly’.

Traditionally, the sea is the ‘receiver’ of the spirit, but here it is also the air, since the process is likened to Colin McCahon’s 1973 ‘Jet Out’ paintings. As a requiem for James K Baxter, they combined a walk along the beach with the Cape Rēinga myth and the cross-like shape of an aeroplane overhead. Leigh had been so impressed by McCahon’s work that in 1999 he had adopted the artist’s title ‘Jump’ as the name of his company.

Apart from some quirky phrasing, this is a more orthodox poem than usual for Leigh, but that is explained by the context. The poem joins a long tradition of elegies. (I think, for example, of Thomas Nashe’s ‘Litany’ on the death of Helen, with its image of flowers in decay.) Leigh, who was drawn to French Symbolist poetry, liked readers to pause to contemplate imagery, and on this occasion he tried spacing out the poem with a separate page for each couplet.

A friend who read this poem had difficulty with its religious atmosphere and hints of an afterlife. I am myself an atheist, but I am still happy to enter a spiritualised text if it has aesthetic and emotional interest. Call it a willing ‘suspending’ of disbelief.