That Lazy N

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Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Branding cattle, Branding irons, Brands, Brands -lazy letters, Bush Poetry, Formal poetry, poem, poetry

That Lazy N

It stood for Noel, that lazy N.
He passed it on to me back when
He had no cattle left to brand.
He said: “It’s yours”, and shook my hand.

I used it then for many years.
It branded cows, it branded steers.
In glowing coals was often fired;
But now the old iron is retired.

No longer will its letters sear
The heifer’s hide – the wild-eyed steer
Won’t bellow as with fire and spark
The red-hot metal makes its mark.

Now painted green, the brand is cold.
The last to use it hot grows old.
It rests there on its wooden stand.
There are no cattle left to brand.

{photo – D.N. O’Brien}

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Alice

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ANZUK Force, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Avondale bar, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Sembawang Strip, Singapore bar girls

Alice

Was in a bar, a dingy dive,
That Alice worked – just twenty five,
A bar girl, by grief driven mad.
A Yankee sailor, handsome lad,
She’d tell me was her absent beau:
“The ships are in – I want you go
And find him – bring him here to me.”
Each time this was her tearful plea.
And humour her, each time I would,
For in her heart the girl was good.

“He come – I know he will!” she’d cry.
“Alice, I’ve looked – not yet.” I’d lie.
Her son they’d taken from her breast;
Mad Alice never more would rest
Until she saw his father’s face.
At closing time she’d leave the place
And make her way through midnight’s gloom
Back to her wretched rented room,
And at her shrine, prayer candles burn;
And wait for her love’s safe return.

A Comforting Millstone

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Identity politics, poem, poetry, resentment, Revisionist Historians, Self pity, Slave morality, Victim culture, Victim mentality

For the sins of the fathers no men should be whipped –
For the men who were murdered or slaves who were shipped;
But the sins be acknowledged, a lesson to learn,
Lest the sons be inclined to repeat them in turn.

And the sons of the slaves and the men who were killed
Must acknowledge that they are now free and free-willed;
That they owe naught to any, nor do any owe
For what’s passed, compensation – all claims to forgo.

Now the words writ above are but vain hopes and prayers.
History’s “victim”, a scowl on his countenance wears,
As he sinks neath a burden of self-imposed weight,
And he never will drop it – or wipe clean the slate.

The Melian Dialogue

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Ancient Greece, Athenian Empire, Athens, Delian League, Greece, Italian sonnet, Melos, Peloponnesian League, Petrarchan sonnet, poem, poetry, Siege of Melos, sonnet, Sparta, Spartan, Spenserian sonnet, The Cyclades, The Melian Debate, The Melian Dialogue, The Peloponnese, The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

The Melian Dialogue

Now Melians, consider what we ask:
Swear loyalty to us and none shall die.
For what’s transpired we’ll not take you to task;
But now surrender, lest our arrows fly.
Athenians – surrender? – tell us why?
Our city, in this war it takes no side,
Though it is true to Sparta we’ve a tie.
But you, so mighty – can it be denied
That Melos could not swell the Spartan tide?
We won’t accept your claimed neutrality,
For Spartan ships, your harbour they have plied.
We’ll have no truck with weak morality –
To conquer you is right; it would be wrong
To spare you – Athens must be seen as strong!

Would you alarm the other neutral states?
Will they not think it’s Athens they must fear?
Our friends and allies know we hold them dear.
Not one, we think, disloyalty contemplates;
To Sparta they will not open their gates.
But island states that are to Sparta near,
Towards which may those Spartan triremes steer;
Their destinies we’ll not leave to the Fates.
It would be shameful were we not to fight!
Oh no, not shameful – you would surely lose.
We are the stronger – you would all be slain.
But we believe there is a chance despite
Your strength, and so we feel that we must choose
To stand and fight – perhaps a victory gain!

The Spartans too will come to our defence.
Self-interested Spartans fight to win
A victory for you? – they have more sense!
They will, we think, for Spartans are our kin.
With them we share our ways – our discipline.
And too, the gods are on our side – we’ll fight!
The Spartans would not spread their ships so thin.
Our navy would put such a force to flight.
The gods will watch as weakness yields to might.
So one last time we ask you – make your choice.
Think of your people – make the one that’s right.
We men of Melos answer with one voice:
Return to Athens, tell them we’ll not yield!
Oh foolish Melos! – now your fate is sealed.

The Melian Dialogue

Nietzscheisms 2

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Australian poet, Formal poetry, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity, poem, poetry, Pontius Pilate, Rhyming couplets, The Antichrist by Nietzsche

Nietzscheisms 2

By syphilis his brain would soon be diced.
With girded loins he wrote “The Antichrist”.

“What think you of us Christians?” they asked Nietzsche.
He said: “One I admired – he was your teacher.”

He said the gospels died upon the cross.
He thought the man who died – the greater loss.

You don’t agree, he thought the clergy crooks?
Then it is clear – you haven’t read his books.

He doubted Paul had had a revelation –
Just that he had a wild imagination.

Now Pilate he admired, he would confess –
To Pilate, what was one Jew more or less?

Botany Bay 1770

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australia, Australian Aboriginals, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Botany Bay, Captain James Cook, Discovery of Australia, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, The British Empire

Botany Bay 1770

Well it was bound to happen – with your undefended borders.
If it hadn’t been the British, following their monarch’s orders,
Then it would have been the Frenchies or the Dutch or Portuguese,
Or the Maoris, or the maniacal murderous Japanese.
When you haven’t any fences and no army – no defences,
Then it’s clear to any sane man that there will be consequences.
When you’re hunters and you’re gatherers in small nomadic bands,
Standing on the bay’s grey beaches with but spears in your hands,
Don’t expect that stronger peoples with their empires all expanding
Will just say: “Hello”, and sail away without making a landing,
Planting flags, and claiming sovereignty to land on which you’re standing.
It’s the way it was back then, and there’s no sense in you demanding
That we change the past – you lost, but look upon the brighter side man –
Had it been the Asian hordes instead, they would have tanned your hide man.

Holodomor

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Communism, Deaths due to Communism, Holodomor, Joseph Stalin, poem, poetry, Radical socialism, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, The Kulaks, The Ukraine, Totalitarianism, Ukrainian famine, Ukrainian genocide, Ukriane, USSR

Holodomor

In the Ukraine the Kulaks tilled the soil
To grow the grain to make the daily bread.
Was by their enterprise and by their toil,
That all who lived in the Ukraine were fed.
But now their neighbour Russia burned bright red,
And Stalin said: “The Kulaks all must die!
For by their class our enemies are led –
And our collectivism they defy.
Without them there will be no wheat or rye.
The fields where grain once grew will then be bare,
And in their millions will the dead there lie.”
So for the vanished Kulaks say a prayer.
Think for a moment of their pain and fear;
And don’t think it could never happen here.

Holodomor documentary

Lost at Sea – 1971

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Drownings at sea, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Prawn trawlers, Scarborough Queensland Trawlers

The sea is still, these cold and starry nights.
No breakers pound upon the jagged reef.
The trawlers scan the sea with searching lights.
No nets – but grappling hooks, they drag beneath.

For somewhere in these depths there lies a boat,
And two men in this watery graveyard sleep;
And hence all day and night – this fleet afloat,
To find, and raise their coffin from the deep.

Two brothers, fishermen, the boys who drowned.
Big happy fellows – we knew them quite well.
The throb of diesels – I still hear that sound,
And too, when it hooked up – the trawler’s bell.

{In memory of “The Kids”}

Frank Slide

Tags

Alberta, Australian poet, Canada, Canadian Rockies, Crowsnest Pass, Formal poetry, Frank Slide, Frank Slide poem, poem, poetry, Spenserian sonnet, Turtle Mountain

Don’t make your camp beneath its towering peaks.
So said the ancient ones – the mountain moans.
Sometimes it moves, sometimes it loudly speaks
Of grinding pain within its brittle bones.
And when it shivers it shakes loose the stones,
And down its furrowed flanks they swiftly roll.
Yet brave men turned a deaf ear to its groans,
And rushed to mine its gleaming seams of coal.
But Nature’s force no mortal men control,
And deep within – the mountain’s rocky heart
It broke, and terrible would be the toll;
For with a roar the east face fell apart.
And many who on that grey morning died,
Still sleep beneath the rubble of Frank Slide.

Frank Slide

Corn

Tags

Australian bush poetry, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, corn, Dairy farming in Queensland, maize, poem, poetry

Corn was a crop that each spring we would sow,
And in the autumn pick and bag each row.
Hard work it was, but then we didn’t mind;
We’d fill the shed with all that it could hold;
The cobs we’d husk and to a fine meal grind,
To feed the milkers through the winter cold.

But on reflection now I shake my head;
My father, bless his soul, is now long dead.
By sixty he was bent, his body worn,
From all that grinding toil and sweat and pain.
Now he is gone and so too is the corn,
And houses stand where once were fields of grain.