From Six Great Barrier Elegies: 5. Toys Poem by Rob Dyer

One day, coming down quite early in the morning to the Bay,
following the sheep track through the toetoe,
above the pied shags resting in the pohutukawa,
out to the deep cave, where the dead souls leap
and the fishermen still angle for the sleek maomao,
I saw a jet fighter buzz the beach, roll round Sugarloaf
in a dizzy spin - noiselessly, only after was his roar;
I saw a submarine surface silent in the waves, a moving rock,
beyond Pitokuku, the navel torn by the northerly gale,
until he dived beyond Palmer's Beach -
a million dollars for a bird to carry our angry arms,
a million dollars for a shark to lurk unseen.

Yet when the submarine is a tin can rusting away
where the hapuku and the maomao hide,
when the jet fighter is plaything of the tide and sand,
like the galleons or grey battleships under the Coral Sea,
and the pilots all sit home drinking cool beer
and telling tall tales of daring never done,
the rocks will still stand against the crested waves
for the gannets to perch, the pied shags to rook;
the petrels too return from fishing the wide oceans
to the secret nesting places of the heart,
high in Hirakimata, as for ten thousand years -
Will all men's dreams recede from the desolate cliffs?