Let There be Light!

Tags

Australian poet, Big Bang Theory, Creation of the Universe, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Singularity, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Let There be Light!

The singularity is now complete.
Contained — the building blocks of gas and rock.
The Master Builder rises from His seat
And sets to midnight its celestial clock.
But time’s timepiece will neither tick nor tock
Until the detonation — till the blast.
The Builder nods — the shackles, they unlock;
The force that held the seething mass is cast
Aside — no longer is the bomb held fast,
As now the point of no return is reached.
And so the future will be as the past,
As boundaries are broken, blasted, breached.
Exploding outward does the matter race,
Constructing rock and gas and time and space.

— D.N. O’Brien

Dusk on the Farm in Winter

Tags

Australian poet, poem, poetry, Shadorma

Dusk on the Farm in Winter

Night falling,
soft-lowing cattle
walk slowly
single file.
A cold westerly blowing.
The shutters rattle.

— D.N. O’Brien

Killing Time

Tags

Australian poet, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Triolet

𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞

The farmer deals with death most every day.
Without death there would be no milk or meat.
The young are mostly shot or sent away —
The farmer deals with death most every day.
“But killing’s cruel!”, the well-fed people say —
The farmer says: “I kill, so you may eat”.
The farmer deals with death most every day.
Without death there would be no milk or meat.

— D.N. O’Brien

Filling the Vacuum

Tags

Aristotle, Atheism, Australian poet, Baal, Formal poetry, Friedrich Nietzsche, God is Dead, Odin, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zeus

Filling the Vacuum

“God is dead.” So Nietzsche’s often quoted.
The atheists will say that’s what he said.
And he did, but it should too be noted
That Nietzsche said it with a sense of dread —
That we had killed Him — it was on our head
He laid the blame. And what, he asked, what thing
Replaces murdered gods, gods cold and dead?
The bells in church towers will no longer ring,
And all those hymns? Why will the choirs still sing
Of Him, when He no longer is of use?
A fallen deity, a banished king,
Devoid of power, like Baal, Odin, or Zeus.
And Nature does an empty space abhor —
Rush in, the gods of mammon and of war.

— D.N. O’Brien

Everlasting Quest

Tags

Ancient Persian Mythology, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, Huma Bird or Bird of Paradise, poem, poetry, Quest, Sufism, The bird with no feet

𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭

The bird with no feet makes its nest
In a cloud — there it pauses for rest,
And one egg does the little bird lay,
For one bird must replace it one day.
To just one, all its life, it gives birth;
To soar high — when it falls to the Earth.

— D.N. O’Brien

Quest

From the North

Tags

Aboriginal Australians, Australian bush poetry, Australian Megafauna Extinction, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, poem, poetry

From the North

In the south live the lumbering giants of the Earth.
They’ve been slumbering there since the continent’s birth.
In the north is a tide that is turning to south,
And the tide it is black, and it’s wide, and its mouth,
It hungers for meat — for the harvest of fire;
Like a wave it rolls on and it never does tire.
To the north there’s a glow like the east-rising sun,
And it glows ever brighter as each mile is won.

And the sabre-tooth looks from the mouth of his lair,
And he growls at the glow; smells the smoke in the air.
And the giant kangaroo pauses out on the plain,
But he has little sense, for he’s little of brain.
And to all the doomed giants there’s a fact that applies —
From the north will come death — from the ones who are wise.
And the giants in the south, they have nowhere to go;
They are huge, they are powerful — alas, they are slow.
They’ve been safe in the south for these millions of years;
From the north comes their end — from the north come the spears.

— D.N. O’Brien

The Bird Band

Tags

Australian birds, Australian bush poetry, Australian bush poets, australian formal poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, bird band, Formal poetry, poem, poetry

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐝

One evening walking through the scrub,
(A shortcut home from Riley’s pub.)
Under the glow of a full moon,
I heard a brisk and lively tune.

I looked around, and there I saw
Upon that moonlit forest floor,
A pumpin’ out a chorus grand,
A finely feathered all bird band.

And all around on stumps and logs
Sat kangaroos and native dogs,
And emus swaying to the beat
Jumped up and down and stamped their feet.

Echidnas danced Irish quadrilles
While skillfully avoiding quills.
Goannas flicked in time their tongues,
While in the band with bursting lungs

Black glossy red-tailed cockatoos
In harmony sang out the blues.
On ukuleles magpies strummed.
A flock of honey-eaters hummed.

With twelve apostles on the drums,
The beat it echoed from the gums,
While lyre birds serenely played.
(They’re known for being rather staid).

A bell bird rang his built in chime.
A whip bird cracked his whip in time.
A kookaburra, with a smile,
On his guitar played finger-style.

I stayed a while, then home to bed
With music coursing through my head.
I woke and wondered had I dreamed.
Outside my window, moonlight beamed,

And all was quiet and nothing stirred.
I listened hard but nothing heard.
No, not a noise of fur or fowl,
Except — the hooting of an owl.

— D.N. O’Brien

Angling Adder

Tags

Australian poet, Fishing snake, poem, poetry

𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐫

I said to the snake: ”Put it down!”
The snake hissed: “Would you see it drown?”
Replied I: “Reptilian beast —
You’re saving it — but for your feast.”

— D.N. O’Brien

The Swordsmith

Tags

Australian poet, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, Swordsmith

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐡

From the Maker’s furnace is wrought each life,
When are portions promised of joy and strife,
And these both, in measure, for life one pays,
And the price is fate, and it cuts both ways.

And how blows are borne, will in each reveal,
Whether flawed with weakness, or strong like steel.
Knows the smith, when forging a two-edged sword,
How it holds each edge, is its temper scored.

— D.N. O’Brien

Dams

Tags

Anti-dam fanatics, Australian bush poetry, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, dams, Green fanatics, irrigation, poem, poetry

The seed that’s planted in the endless rows,
With irrigation sprouts, emerges, grows.
But take away the sprays that make the rain,
And witness then, the graveyard of the grain,
As each seed shrinks and withers where it lies,
As in its blasted shell the life force dies —
A desolation sown thick with the dead,
Where could have been a field of golden bread.

To plant into the ground when parched and dry —
To throw the dice, the seed of wheat, of rye,
Upon the dust — to gamble with the gods;
Or else to irrigate the tumbled sods
And watch the seedlings germinate and thrive,
So those who would destroy the dams — survive.

— D.N. O’Brien