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
Parihaka
The province has set up shrines
to its martyrs and heroes Te
Rangi Hiroa to the north
where his vikings landed von
Tempsky well to the south
at the scene of his last encounter
with the spirit of ’48
the Richmond cottage with two
volumes of the Evangelical
Magazine (but Harry
Atkinson out with the militia
read Mill On Liberty
a year after publication)
colonial gothic St Mary's
with neat rows in the graveyard
soldiers sailors settlers
killed by the rebel natives
regimental hatchments
one for the Friendly Maoris
a 20th century second
thought in bright blond wood
to remember all who died
a patch on a war scarred face
no sign for Parihaka
a broken road a set
of ruinous foundations
charred remains of timber
a ’38 Chevrolet
under the cloudy mountain.