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
Peacocks
Strangely in this suburb peacocks constantly cry
strutting behind their wire. If there were tended
lawns sloping to a docile river, if an antique
decorum was defined when the birds shrieked
and displayed flamboyant sexual colours to the eyes
of gentlepeople pacing gravelled paths
who in such ways were minded of the other
uses for the languorous summer half-light…
no mullioned windows mask unambiguous ardours
discreetly managed behind closed curtains.
Still, the birds shriek and exhibit the colours
of appetite and desire; within the weatherboard houses
there's passion enough. Though the decorum has departed
the curtains are strictly drawn and the nights are close.