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
Old house
Night sounds: the old house settles,
a nail thrums through the floor,
a child calls sharply, a bird
cries out once only. Silence
climbs on a wave of small sounds,
a distant car, a far dog barking,
the pulse of an electric guitar.
The sounds of the day linger,
voices of children, the march
of a fugue, the boom of rock,
a car at speed on the straight.
Old house, you are close to your end,
you do well to fall silent.
Remember the clip-clop of hooves,
wheels brisk through the gravel,
children and birds in the trees,
fingers finding the keys,
the swarthy baritone in full
voice proclaiming I dreamt I dwelt…
The sounds have sunk to a sigh.