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
The janitor
Claud, derelict janitor, once visited by the angel,
defiant victim, street arab, Ishmaelite,
broken-nosed, bruised, rank with appetite,
was a prisoner of theatre, his own and the small town
boards he had strutted on moping and declaiming.
Yet he remained an agile imp, busy at his furnace,
his eye and brow an almost noble pride
irradiating. Within him, faint with methyl
alcohol, limp on his lyric tongue, a voice
murmured of dignity as he mouthed the passionate
speeches of kings, entire heroic scenes.
A level light from the setting sun suffused
the scene he dwelt in. He maintained
a decorous expectancy, still ready for the angel.