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
November 1978
Late November, the violent fifth gone by;
this year the rockets were less luminous
under a dull sky and a beating wind;
heaven was well out of reach. The dominion
of the deprived beast continues. There's no question
of a transforming kiss being asked or given.
The ambiguous past is close: the maladroit
conspirator crackling in flames of fat;
the unresting spirits glaring outside the rim
of halloween fires; the blood of the dead king drying
on the turned sod with no promise of harvest;
the legendary beasts uncouth and awkward
stealing from the forest to sit by hearth and candle,
marvellous presences begging to be accepted.
Flung heavenwards from an aboriginal burning
shreds of light fall out of a lowering sky,
glow briefly, linger like after images
etched on the retina by a roman candle
a catherine wheel a sparkler in the hand
of a child wide eyed and amazed, the last
faint glimmer in the eyes of the dying gods,
the rejected ones, wolf, crow, snake, fox
and the disguised prince no-one would stoop to kiss.