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
Ancestors
A word on the tongue, a sharp metallic taste.
A child at a loss or in pain, a splinter
of grief working its way to the present;
a piece of the past taut with irony,
convict whipmaster messenger of Christ,
the prophet drunk and broken by a dray.
A word with the bite of acid on the tongue,
an irresistible command to utter.
Winners and losers heaped in a common grave
prick at the nerve-ends asking for wry
words from a puckered mouth. Familiar shades
drink of the same bitter draft, closer
to truth than no taste at all. Better
a voice for anger than a complaining silence.