Oliver ......... Poems

Hail, rain, sweet rain, sleet and
Winds eastward, southward and,
Northward! see, gale-blown fig
Tree-dance! stay chair-fast, mick
...

The stuff that stinks
At each nose is dear
To one and all! Those
That revel in this begotten
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An absence yours, disturbingly
Entwines me; the crowned being
Of season, you're away, now beyond
The centre and shaft of the self!
...

Just as right kisses
On the wrong lips or otherwise,
Sometimes a right word
I choose for wrong thought
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I grew out of childhood
Wiser and wiser, positioning
Myself with the surfeit of knowing
On myself, but then stalking
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Now the rubber-tree leaves are cadaverous, and strewn
Along dry river-banks and stony sinuous passages!
This is the time you stroll out, remembering past
Festivals when cicadas blare swan-songs from tree-boles
...

The rain now falls; its diamonds break, and break!
The rain here sinks like thoughts that lapse in mind;
Enormous and blissful, it drives its frenzy to wake
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The grass, its green flame; the flame's soaring!
Uplands nourish the family of culms that clamber
On damp river-sides. The grass unwinds its striving
...

Midnight! I hark to the whispers of trees that toss
Their branches like dancers in festal season!
O trees, they swing as the breath of darkness gushes
Across the thorpe! Beneath this blackish or brown
...