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 candle
In this room a great splendour
shines past the shadows
from a single candle
soft as silk cloth fingered
for memories over and over
true as the shape of a shell
sharp as the scent of a lemon.
In the shadows under
chair and table, in unlit corners
small black imps squint
aslant the light,
take and cause no harm,
may choose to venture
out into that great glow.
The candle, a bright stalk
in a round holder, generates,
swells, is a presence,
a tremor at the still centre.