Late Empire

Tags

Australian poet, Decline of civilizations, End of Empire, Fall of the Roman Empire, poem, poetry, Western Civilization

Barbarians borders encircle.
The people return Mrs Merkle.
Everything’s blamed on the Russians.
(As once it was blamed on the Prussians.)
Great generals are now all dead;
Weak worriers stand in their stead.
The brave replaced by anti-heroes.
Bad emperors fiddle like Neros.
And art goes from awful to worse.
The Empire’s awash with free verse.
The media are all insane.
The language is beyond profane.
The Empire is seeded with spies.
The truth is no different to lies.
The legions are filled with the foe.
The cold winds of fate start to blow.
It’s clear that it’s lasted too long.
The feeble give way to the strong.
A virus comes out of nowhere;
The people are too sick to care.
Barbarians, unsportsmanlike,
Deliver a preemptive strike.

— D.N. O’Brien

Slaves to a New King

Tags

Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great, Australian poet, Australian traditional poetry, Darius the Great, East versus West, Formal poetry, Persian Empire, Persian Empire vassal states, Persian invasion of Greece, poem, poetry, Refugees from the Levant, Spenserian sonnet, Syrian refugees, The Levant, Western Civilization, Xerces the Great

Be welcoming? Show kindness and compassion?
No! Self defense must be the Hellene’s goal.
This new, naive (some say progressive) fashion:
To rescue every body and each soul,
Must surely of a nation take its toll.
They once repulsed the pushy Persian tossers.
It wasn’t in their nature to console
Darius and King Xerces for their losses.
The Persians now nail Christians to their crosses;
They blindly follow leaders cruel and mad —
Fanatical, insane, barbaric bosses;
Yet for their plight today’s Greeks should be sad?
The ancient Greek admired the free and brave;
He thought the Persian, to his King, a slave.

— D.N. O’Brien