He KōreroreroWhat would you do if tonight was the last day of your life?

Nā KERI HULME

There will be no tomorrow. The sun will not rise for you.

I refuse to speculate about your future…

I do know what my Unca Bill (who had shot many hundreds of animals) said:

“Dead is dead. Otherwise we couldn’t eat ‘em.”

I won’t diverge into live eating: it did happen – and of humans – here.

But – you have 12 healthy hours: current circumstances prevailing,
and no especial difference

between when you took your morning shit and – now!

Would you hunt down hated enemies?

Seek a joining with former lovers?

Desperately try to correct wrongs you’d done?

Maybe you are artistic and you will carve/sculpt/paint/illuminate that work you
have always meant to start on?

You are a musician and you realise NOW OR Nothing for the song of your heart –

Auē! The hours are slipping away –

I think every human being is inherently able in the range of arts humans of
all times & races have practised

& I know that these accomplishments outlast us – there is cave art both here in Aotearoa and Australia, Papua Niugini and many many older sites in the world –

We are a species who really wants to be recollected, remembered, recorded –
so we can pass on things we deem important to future generations…

whether those future generations deem what we seek to share worthwhile is –
another story…

Writer Keri Hulme is southern Kāi Tahu but lives in “Big O” – Ōkarito. Among her passions are whitebait and family history. In 1985 Keri’s novel The Bone People won the Booker Prize.