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
Prayer of an elder
Two people, not any longer children, walking
long-haired, flare-jeaned, arms about each other,
from the bus station towards Ada Street
where the houses decay and the landlords
prosper and the young, only just, survive:
for a moment the promise is fulfilled,
of commonwealth, like two heads bent
together, hair knit by the whipping wind.
The prayer of an elder is briefly offered:
that they take care of each other,
run a successful rent strike,
lie in the path of the demolition contractor,
grow angry in the end and become
brave enough to shoot the cost accountant.