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Reference Points
Stranger within • Generation gap • Midwinter spring • Silent revolution • Trees, travelling • Under the wave • Magnolia • Augury • Four elements • Peacocks • Old house • Rainbird • Apocalypse
Histories
Historian • Portraits • The janitor • Ancestors • Yesterday's loss • Counter-revolution • Prayer of an elder • Robert Lowell • Social control • Waitomo • Parihaka • Rongopai
Myths and Emblems
Counter talk • The empty chair • The candle • Wave and shell • Increase and multiply • November 1978 • Rumpelstiltskin • Thumbelina • The swineherd • A Japanese tale • Solstice
Source: Out of Season: Poems. Wellington; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980
Electronic source: Out of Season: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
Stranger within
Stranger within, if you walked out in the world
I would not know you, not for sure. This cage
that carries you about, that sleeps and wakes,
artefact of inheritance and use,
has been contrived from fine distinctions – age,
sex, status, history, place and circumstance.
I suspect they mean little to you. I know
that you wake when I sleep – certainly
most of my waking hours you are quiet enough
to be sleeping. Do you then dream me?
Is that why I stir suddenly ill at ease
wondering what it is that I cannot remember
and not just where I might be but who it could be
that is there? Are your dreams troubled too?