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
Wave and shell
That wave fell with a very final sound.
How many wore the shell down to a naked spiral?
Glowing, yes, but not a shape it had been
designed to show and no more in the end than lovely
and now that is less than enough. Once in a while
a light wind from the land peeled a thin
sheet of spray from a crest and it had
no shape at all after a moment. There was
never more than a single wave; it broke
like the beat of a drum. I remember
enough of these, slow separate notes,
to mark the passing of a long funeral.