Baxter, James K. (1926-1972)

This can be seen also in the audacious way in which Baxter’s “Poem by the Clock Tower, Sumner” (1948) juxtaposes Minoan Crete and Plato’s mythical lost continent of Atlantis with Kiwi beach culture:

Beside the dark sand and the winged foam
Under the shadow of the naked tower[*]
Play the wild children[+], stranger than Atlanteans.
For them the blazed rock hieroglyph burns clear[#]:
Bear dance and bull dance in the drenched arena[~]

“Terrible mirrors,” he calls them, bowing to their (alleged) superior wisdom:

... An Ice Age lies
Between us;[$] for they know
The place and hour of the young phoenix’ nest
On the bare dune where we can see only
Worn glacial stones and terminal moraine. …

[P. Fletcher, In the Bull-Ring: Hot Air and Hyperbole in Antipodean Writing, p. 73]

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[*] See >Xerxes.

[+] See >Baring-Gould, Rev. Sabine.

[#] See >Felton Mathew’s spider-web plan.

[~] See >Waite, Arthur Edward.

[$] See >Mu.