A Giant Awakens

Tags

australia, Australia Day, Australian poet, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

𝐀 𝐆𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐬

You slumbered in the south whilst all around,
The world closed in as daring men set sail.
Before long would your barren shores be found,
As eastward did the roaring forties wail.
These sailors and their nations, would prevail —
Your stone-age people would be swept aside;
Their ancient ways dispersed before the gale.
They’d built no walls to stop the rising tide;
Your moat was crossed; they had no place to hide.
And so did you awaken — and in fright!
As to the world your eyes were opened wide.
You rose from sleep — emerged into the light,
And saw the old ways were forever dead.
Your heart was filled with hope — and too with dread.

— D.N. O’Brien

Certa Cito

Tags

121 Signal Squadron, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, Gough Whitlam, poem, poetry, Royal Australian Signal Corps, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

𝑪𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒂 𝑪𝒊𝒕𝒐

The plan is hatched by foolish faceless men.
The squadron’s fate by treachery is sealed.
The method and the why, the where, the when,
Is to the gathered malcontents revealed.
All that the patriotic have concealed
Will be exposed just when the time is right;
The squadron will be banished from the field —
Its troops will be destroyed without a fight —
All trace of it will fade into the night,
And none will mourn its swift and sure demise;
And on its fate no one will shine a light.
But those who filled its ranks — its ears and eyes,
Who served and sweated on that Asian Hill,
They know how easily mere words can kill.

— D.N. O’Brien

The Church of Hagia Sophia

Tags

Australian poet, Constantinople, Hagia Sophia, islam, Istanbul, Kamal Ataturk, Petrarchan sonnet, poem, poetry, President Erdogan, sonnet, Turkey

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐚 𝐒𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐚

They wish to claim you as their holy place,
And so insult the name of Ataturk.
Towards a callous caliphate they work.
Thus your magnificence they would deface —
Remove the images of Christ that grace
Your ancient walls. Islamic forces lurk
Within your state. That wise and mighty Turk,
(Whose legacy these fiends wish to debase)
That founding father, would have brought them down.
But he’s long dead, and now a false Sultan
Sits on his phony throne and makes his claim.
But disregard the rantings of this clown —
Holy Cathedral, work of Western Man,
You’ll stay a church in everything but name.

— D.N. O’Brien

Clemens the Impostor

Tags

Agrippa Postumus, Ancient Rome, Australian poet, caesar, Clemens, Clemens the impostor, poem, poetry, Tiberius

𝐂𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭o𝐫

“How did you come to be Agrippa, slave?”
“As you came to be Caesar”, Clemens said.
A knave can recognize another knave.
Tiberius: “I want this fellow dead.”

— D.N. O’Brien

Pat

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Shell shock, World War 2

Pat

To join his brothers he was keen.
In forty two at just nineteen,
With both he sallied of to war.
Though never under fire before,
Courage he showed, no lack of will,
But no rejoicing at the kill.
But then there rolled a hand grenade,
And with his life Pat almost paid.
Upon a stretcher he was placed.
With morphine were his veins then laced.
A brother’s hand upon each knee,
Pat asked: “What will become of me?”
“You’ve scored a homer”, they replied;
But twice under the knife he died;
For fragments lay close to his heart —
Cold iron with which he’d never part.
Evacuated back to home,
Not buried under foreign loam,
He thought now of the future peace
When murderous war would wane and cease.
So back to health young Pat was nursed,
For by good fortune he was cursed.
Brought back to life when all but dead —
“You’re fit to fight again.” they said.
Too much to ask of one so young,
Scarred by the blast and by the gun;
And in the morning he had fled.
A note his elder brother read:
“I’m sorry Noel, I’ve done my best,
I’ll wait this war out in the west.”
A tear ran down a weathered cheek;
Noel knew that Pat was far from weak,
So three words with a steady hand
He wrote: “Brother, I understand.”
The two boys fought three more campaigns;
Were members of the few remains.
They both returned in forty five,
And thus did all three boys survive.
Then Pat came back to pay his dues,
And to the state his honour lose;
But all three brothers then embraced,
For each had death in battle faced.
But Pat, the guilt bore all his life —
Cared for his mother, took no wife,
Trod the straight path, and bless his soul,
Revered his brothers, Ron and Noel,
Who kept his secret — his great shame —
They knew that he was not to blame.
And when he lay on his death bed,
A doctor turned to me and said:
“Those scars upon your uncle’s chest —
They’re battle scars, we all have guessed.”
“A hand grenade”, I then replied,
“It’s not the first time he has died.”

— D.N. O’Brien

Choke

Tags

Australian 7th Division AIF, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, Kokoda Trail, New Guinea, Owen Stanley Campaign, poem, poetry

(I was just a kid when I met this man in the very early sixties. He and a mate had called into our farm to see my father — dad had been their platoon sergeant during the Owen Stanley Campaign (Kokoda Trail). Dad told us the story later or at least started to tell us before not being able to continue. He (the ex-soldier) had been in the prone position firing at the Japanese when a bullet had hit him between the eyes near the nose. Because of the position of his head the bullet had passed through his mouth and voice box and out the back of his neck narrowly missing his spinal column. The war was over for him but he made a good recovery apart from a pronounced speech difficulty. )

Choke

I met a man who should have been quite dead.
I listened hard to hear the words he said.
He had a scar between his pale blue eyes,
And one upon his neck, of greater size.

He was my father’s friend, he said: “G’day”;
But in a strange and strangled muffled way.
I saw a tear run down my father’s cheek;
It was some time before my dad could speak.

— D.N. O’Brien

(Flag raising ceremony after the capture of Kokoda November 1942. My father, Sgt Allen Noel O’Brien is amongst these men.)

Ares

Tags

Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Gods, Ares, Australian poet, God of War, Iliad, Mars, poem, poetry, Triolet

𝐀𝐫𝐞𝐬

The hated god was Ares, god of war;
For ancient Grecian parents loved their sons.
They perished on the battlefields, therefore,
The hated god was Ares, god of war.
Those ancient battlefields were strewn with gore,
And often Greek boys were the slaughtered ones.
The hated god was Ares, god of war.
For ancient Grecian parents loved their sons.

— D.N. O’Brien

Cicero Silenced

Tags

Ancient Rome, Australian poet, Cicero, Death of Cicero, Formal poetry, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Mark Antony, Octavian, poem, poetry, Second Triumvirate, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

𝐂𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝

The senate will no longer hear his words.
Herennius has stilled the traitor’s tongue.
By citizens, by slaves, and by the birds,
His praises are no longer to be sung.
His works into the Tiber must be flung.
His theories, but the ramblings of a fool.
His famous oratory, worthless dung.
His poems and his prose, seditious fuel.
The tomes must say that Marcus was a tool
Of those who would deny the good and great.
None may impede the three destined to rule —
So Cicero — forgotten be his fate.
See there his body and his severed head!
Go tell the trio — Cicero is dead.

— D.N. O’Brien

Simoeisios

Tags

Aias, Ajax, Australian poet, Homer, Italian sonnet, Mount Ida, Petrarchan sonnet, poem, poetry, Simoeis River, Simoeisios, sonnet, Telamonian Aias, The Iliad, The Trojan Plain, The Trojan War, Troy

𝙎𝙞𝙢𝙤𝙚𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙨

You fell just as a smooth-barked poplar would.
The spear from Ajax struck you in the chest.
Anthemion’s brave son — he loved you best,
As did your mother. On that field you stood,
A young man, yet unmarried, strong and good;
In armour brightly shining you were dressed.
But no cuirass would shield your noble breast,
For from the arm of Ajax nothing could.

Born by the river that bequeathed your name;
Upon a water meadow you were laid.
Then raised to be your parent’s pride and joy,
Though never would their kindness be repaid.
In bloom of youth, up to the front you came,
To fall and rot upon the plain of Troy.

— D.N. O’Brien

Deathly Detachment

Tags

7th Division 2nd AIF, Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, New Guinea Campaigns, Owen Stanley Campaign, poem, poetry, World War 2

Deathly Detachment

You doubt this tale told to me long ago?
But wait! I heard it from their very lips.
Cruel circumstance may bring the noble low;
It’s bloody war sometimes the balance tips.

Was rendered then without embellishment;
No hint of sentiment — matter of fact.
No judgement; none had reason to repent;
And words once said, they never would retract.

I write it here as best I can recall.
Three men agreed it was at Butcher’s Flat.
They drove them up against a lethal wall
Of spitting guns, they died, and that was that.

The jungle floor a stinking sea of mud.
Like islands were the bodies of the foe.
The biting tropic sun soon dried the blood.
And where the victors sat no one would know.

Detachment was the normal state of mind;
Exhaustion of the body and the brain.
So seated, on a Spartan meal they dined —
Arose, and left the shambles to the slain.

— D.N. O’Brien