Kua loloa Kea-au i ka nahele;
Hala kua hulu-hulu Pana-ewa i ka laau;
Inoino ka maha o ka ohia o La’a.
Ua ku kepakepa ka maha o ka lehua;
5 Ua po-po’o-hina i ka wela a ke Akua.
Ua u-ahi Puna i ka oloka’a pohaku,
I ka huna pa’a ia e ka wahine.
Nanahu ahi ka papa o Olu-ea;
Momoku ahi Puna hala i Apua;
10 Ulu-á ka nahele me ka laau.
Oloka’a kekahi ko’i e Papa-lau-ahi;
I eli ’a kahi ko’i e Ku-lili-kaua.
Kai-ahea a hala i Ka-li’u;
A eu e, e ka La, ka malama-lama.
15 O-na-naka ka piko o Hilo ua me ke one,
I huli i uka la, i hulihia i kai;
Ua wa-wahi ’a, ua na-ha-há,
Ua he-hele-lei!
[Translation.]
STANZA 4
(Bombastic style)
Ke’-au is a long strip of wildwood;
Shag of pandanus mantles Pan’-ewa;
Scraggy the branching of Laa’s ohias;
The lehua limbs at sixes and sevens—
5 They are gray from the heat of the goddess.
[Page 63] Puna smokes mid the bowling of rocks—
Wood and rock the She-god heaps in confusion,
The plain Oluea’s one bed of live coals;
Puna is strewn with fires clean to Apua,
10 Thickets and tall trees a-blazing.
Sweep on, oh fire-ax, thy flame-shooting flood!
Smit by this ax is Ku-lili-kaua.
It’s a flood tide of lava clean to Kali’u,
And the Sun, the light-giver, is conquered.
15 The bones of wet Hilo rattle from drought;
She turns for comfort to mountain, to sea,
Fissured and broken, resolved into dust.
This poem is taken from the story of Hiiaka. On her return
from the journey to fetch Lohiau she found that her sister
Pele had treacherously ravaged with fire Puna, the district
that contained her own dear woodlands. The description given
in the poem is of the resulting desolation.
PAUKA 5
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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