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
Counter talk
I ask you: is that
all for now? is there
anything else? And you
look at the shelves vaguely
dissatisfied, pick up
your change and your parcel
and go away saying
you'll try somewhere else.
Do that. But watch it.
There are plenty of crooks
in the trade who offer
sometimes at bargain
basement prices items
they don't have in stock;
their hands, eyes, guts,
souls, selves. But do that.
And if you come back
I will say: well, maybe
a cup with a cracked
handle will hold water
but I'm not offering
to sell you a river.
Do you want more?
Is there something else?