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
Thumbelina
Nothing for it but to marry the Italian prince
and live like a white flower among fallen columns.
Still, the exquisite northerner, so narrowly preserved
from the attentions of toad, mole, cockchafer,
representatives of a grumpier civilisation,
left a purpose, of sorts, unfulfilled.
How did the north breed anything so fine?
Only by magic. Those terrible old witches,
lower lips drooping and drooling over their breasts,
had always this one function before the brave soldier
cut off their heads with a careless stroke
and went on to live happily ever after.
But who shall redeem the burghers if the exotic
sure-footed southerners snap up the children
sent by an obscure providence to brighten
those unimaginably long winters? The velvet
coat, the irridescent wings, even the bre-ke-ke-kex
croaked in admiration, deserve their due.
The butterfly will drag the lily leaf forever,
the swallow will always be a visitor
and the creatures will never have more
to cherish than a tormenting memory.