To Charles Brasch
Preface
Part One
Sleep Will Come Singly • A Ballad of Bad Omens • The Tempest • Sea Legend • Fire Without Phoenix • The Time of the Eagle • And I, In Arcady • The Beachcomber • For One Flying • A Handful of Sea Shells • A Figure at the Window • Island
Part Two
Ceremony of Pain • Dream • Soldier's Pay • Monastic Ruins • A Performance of Death & The Maiden • At a Holy Well • From a Train in the Midlands • In Radcliffe Square, Oxford • The Streets of My City • In the Fields of My Father's Youth • Colophon—The Poet to his Book
Source: Oliver, W. H., Fire Without Phoenix: Poems 1946-1954. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1957
Electronic source: Fire Without Phoenix: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
Fire Without Phoenix
This red scabbard of rock
In hot December holds
Only a thread of water
Twisted along its folds.
The bitter summer leaves
No land unmarked, it locks
All life deep underground
Beneath the weight of rocks.
Echoes of torment travel
From hanging face to face
Over the parching gorges;
Seasons will displace
This death with chaos, though
In summer could arise
That flame-born phoenix, bright
And angered, soul's harsh prize.