They Cut Down a 100 Year Old Tree!
The kamani nut trees along Dillingham Boulevard were planted over 100 years ago at the founding of the college where I teach.
Known as the “tree with a thousand virtues” because of its many uses—the wood was used for canoes, the oil of the nut for fuel, the resin for medicine—this tree held an important place in Hawaiian culture. In an attempt to preserve a bit of that cultural history, a colleague harvested the nuts from the tree, polished them, and made them into leis.
I was blessed to be a recipient of one of those leis, which I cherish to this day.
In honor of my friend and colleague and the kamani nut trees he loved, I wrote this poem, which was originally published in the Cincinnati Review.
The poem is written in the form of a pantoum, a Malay poetic form, of interlocking quatrains. The second and fourth lines of the each stanza become the first and third lines of the following stanza. And this pattern repeats.
Like the villanelle, the pantoum gets its power from repeating lines that change their meaning each time they are re-contextualized in a new stanza.
The interlocking pattern also dramatizes the pull of the past on the present and the refashioning of the present in light of the past.
Pantoum of the Old Kamani Tree Because it was not modern, They cut down the old kamani tree To clear the way for mass transit. Few knew its history. When they cut down the kamani tree, We managed the loss without nostalgia. Few knew its history. It had been planted at College’s founding. We managed without nostalgia Because we had no use for memory. It had been planted at the College’s founding, A story that just wasn’t modern. Because we had no use for memory, We let the tree go without protest. Its story, after all, wasn’t modern. We preferred the hard shine of progress. We let the tree go without protest, green shade and scent of orange blossoms. We preferred the hard shine of progress. But one man in secret wept for the tree. Green shade and scent of orange blossoms, its rooted place went with our history. But one man in secret wept for the tree And gathered tree nuts in a last harvest. And the rooted place went with our history. But the man knew the tree’s thousand virtues And gathered tree nuts in a last harvest And crushed the ripe kernels into oil. Because the man knew the tree’s thousand virtues And the place of its forgotten knowledge, He crushed the ripe kernels into oil That burned in a lamp like memory. In place of a forgotten knowledge The new station shone in its modernity. And the lamp dimmed into memory. And with it a light that lit the future. The new station shone in its modernity But without root or place or story Or light that lit the future. We were left in perpetual transit. Without root or place or story, We lost all bearing and direction, Were left perpetually in transit— A treeless future, a place with no history.
