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
Trees, travelling
The poplars, at least for the year,
are alive and well; the willows
lining the creeks are looking
as young as ever; the windbreak
pines and cypresses
look livelier. The wind
streams from the sea in a long
unbroken rush of air.
These tense and springy trees
bend and recover, and always
manage to leave no doubt
upright is normal for them;
all newcomers, even so
they are, like the young,
colonists of long standing,
born here, at home. I am
like one of those older trees
scraps of original bush
standing alone in a space
leaning away from the wind
suppliant branches flowing
inland with the air,
never again to be
upright now the dense
company of elder
trees has been taken away;
tough but not too supple
hunched away from the wind
even after it dropped,
expecting the breaking time.