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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
Solstice
The day marks the end of the year,
five years, fifty, more, any number.
It began cool and grey, a light wind turning the leaves,
high mackerel clouds roofing the green space.
Then the blade of the sun struck through. I hacked
the spring's wild growth, shoulders stinging,
harder and leaner under a clear light.
Now the late sun slants into the enclosure.
The fire settles into ash, wood I had hewed
at the meridian from a dead orange tree,
hard, good burning. Light catches in my glass
and gleams, bright in the darkening day.
I look into the dying sun with open eyes.