The Isle

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Fanaticism, Formal poetry, Insane States, poem, poetry

The Isle

There is an isle of sanity
Surrounded by an insane sea;
And on its wicked wind-whipped waves
There sail the ships of Satan’s slaves.

The slaves look to the island’s shore
And make their plans for holy war.
The sane upon the isle they fear,
Yet to destruction still they’ll steer.

For they believe the isle does mar
Their chosen hell – Its sacred star,
Its symbol, they will rend and smash;
They’ll burn the hated isle to ash.

So many times they’ve tried and failed,
But sanity each time prevailed.
But mad men driven by mad dreams
Will not abandon their mad schemes.

And though it’s plain that they will fail,
Their ships they’ll man — the isle assail,
With faces masked, black flags unfurled —
The navy of the underworld.

— D.N. O’Brien

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Monkey Business

Tags

Australian poet, Chimpanzees wage war, Innate instincts, Jane Goodall, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Postmodernists say humans are the cause
Of all the problems of old Mother Earth.
They claim invasions, battles, bloody wars,
Weren’t present prior to our primal birth.
But such a theory is of little worth,
For so behave the monkeys – chimpanzees.
Of facts to back this up there is no dearth.
(Conclusions that most certainly won’t please
Those worshipers of Nature, birds, and bees.)
They prove that just like us these murderous apes
Will conquer, kill, and territory seize.
Our primate cousin also raids and rapes;
It’s not just us who have this fatal flaw,
For like us humans, chimpanzees wage war.

Chimps wage war

Hand Grenade Instructors

Tags

Australian poet, Formal poetry, Hand grenade instructors, Hand grenades, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet

Hand Grenade Instructors

It’s not a job most people would desire;
The guys who do it always seem so tense.
They count each day until they can retire.
Their extra pay is little recompense
For teaching those without an ounce of sense,
And petrified with fear, just how to throw
Grenades – the strain I guess must be immense.
Some fool beside you with a bomb – you know
That he may drop the bloody thing and blow
You both to Hell: “Don’t panic – pull the pin.
You see those dummies lined up in a row?
Now throw!” – the trainee’s face twists in a grin.
The primed grenade drops as his body shakes;
And in a cold sweat the instructor wakes.

10 Grenade fails

Enemies

Tags

Armistice Day, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Bush Poetry, poem, poetry, World War 1, world wars

Enemies

Two farm boys leave their families – their farms;
For each thinks it is right to take up arms.
Two boys, so much alike yet now at odds;
They’ve worked the cattle – sown the tumbled sods,
And harvested the golden fields of grain.
They’ve cursed the floods, and prayed to God for rain.

But now across a blasted shell-ploughed field
They face each other, and one’s fate is sealed.
Had they been neighbours they’d have been best friends,
But such is war – and so the story ends:
Just for a moment one raises his head;
The other aims and fires and shoots him dead.

The Melian Dialogue

Tags

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

The Old Soldier

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, Italian sonnet, Old soldiers, Petrarchan sonnet, poem, poetry, Sacrifice in war, sonnet

The Old Soldier

He sits there in the winter’s morning sun.
His pale blue eyes have faded with the years,
And shed in solitude some bitter tears.
This man so frail, could he have been the one
Whose wasted arms once held a victor’s gun?
He’s seen the darker side, no death he fears,
But as the day of reckoning it nears,
He wonders was the loss worth what was won.

His life, a story mixed of hope and toil.
The years have gone – how rapidly they fly.
And now he sees the enemy is nigh –
A foe no bullet and no steel can foil.
To fight and win but finally to die,
And gain at last a tiny patch of soil.

Small War Couplets

Tags

Afghanistan war, Australian poet, Futile wars, Kalashnikov AK-47, poem, poetry, Rhyming couplets, taliban, Unwinnable wars

Small War Couplets

When you can’t tell the foe from your friend,
History tells us – such wars never end.

But we’re winning – we’ll banish the foe!
If you do, he’ll return when you go.

We have rockets and choppers and drones!
But the Taliban have their smart phones.

His insurgency, with science, we’ll stifle.
He’ll just hide in the hills with his rifle.

But I’m telling you – we have the gear!
And your fighters – are they without fear?

But we’re winning in Afghanistan!
No you’re not – though you did get a tan.

What! A tribesman! Should I fear a peasant?
Being shot from long range isn’t pleasant.

A Kalashnikov! – that’s an old gun!
It will still put a hole in you son.

A Hero Dies

Tags

Australian poet, Courage in war, Formal poetry, poem, poetry, sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, Unsung war heroes, War heroes

A Hero Dies

Oh yes, he was a hero – that is true.
But in that conflict there were thousands more.
The recognized among them are but few –
A careless hand deals out the cards of war.
Those who still live, and those now buried bore
That burden, and returned to start again;
They’d not let bitterness bite at their core.
Our hero rose above those common men,
(Or should I say uncommon) even then
He didn’t show what he had locked inside.
But came defeat – and later, that was when
What gnawed at him, no longer could he hide.
A hero? – sure, such men are spawned in wars;
They’ve measures both of courage and of flaws.

Head Shot

Tags

Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Formal poetry, Head-shot, poem, poetry, shot in the head, War, war movies

There is no pause when one is dead.
When well-aimed bullets pierce one’s head
One doesn’t for a moment stand
With startled look or gesture grand.
Unlike the actors at the flicks,
One plummets like a ton of bricks.

{First appeared in TRINACRIA issue #13, 2015}

Hill 1054

Tags

2/25th Battalion AIF, Australian 7th Division AIF, Australian bush poetry, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Mazraat Ech Chouf, poem, poetry, Syrian Campaign ww2

“Who? V.C. Williams? – Yes, I knew the bloke.”
The old man lit his pipe – savoured the smoke.
He paused a moment, seemed quite deep in thought,
And then he spoke: “It was the French we fought –
The Vichy French – in Syria, a land
Much like our own, out west – dust, rock, and sand.
So V.C. Williams used to say, you know.
He’d say: “This bloody country wouldn’t grow
Much more than saltbush.” – like from where he came.
Yes, V.C. Williams thought it much the same.
In ’41 it was – eighth of July.
It seems like yesterday – how the years fly.
He was beside me in that final fight.
We charged with bayonets fixed and took the height.
He’d joined, he said, to get a taste of war.
We buried him on hill ten fifty four.”

{In memory of Pte. V.C. Williams, C Company 2/25th Battalion 7th Division A.I.F. – Killed in Action, Hill 1054 Syria 8th July 1941 and of Pte. A. N. O’Brien of the same company, Wounded in Action the same day, and in memory of the 26 other members of the unit killed or wounded during the taking of Hill 1054. This was the last action against the Vichy French in Syria – they surrendered 3 days later. The Australians had suffered 1,500 killed and wounded, the French over 6,000}