G'day there ONTHEBEACH...

Mate, what on earth are you doing to me with your very deep, thought provoking philosophically musing ? Seriously I've must agree with you on this one, we're all seeking some meaning to our respective lives, if not, what on earth is the point of it all ?

You've been around awhile, you've seen the inexorable changes in the direction of our country. And you don't need some gifted poet to put it all into verse for you ? There's no doubt an eloquent poet or writer could perhaps soften the spoken message of some horrible event that's going to strike at the very heart of our country like a Depression or similar.

Still words alone, irrespective of how beautifully arranged they may be, will never really soften any blow, or mitigate any tragedy, or lessen the awful impact a terrible event may have upon us ? It's the individual strength of our characters that will get us through, not nice words alone ? You're very much a realist and pragmatists aren't you ONTHEBEACH ? I'm sure you know exactly what I'm referring to ?

Thanks ol' mate.

Dear O Sung Wu,

"Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton bought a house
On a hill above the Bay of Nagasaki
For Madame Butterfly to die in.
Before fifty years had gone
There were thousands of dead butterflies
All over a dead town,
And the marriage brokers were out of a job.
Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton still believes
That only American wives are real.

Madame Butterfly stood at the window all night long
Waiting for Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton to climb the hill.
Like any plumber or electrician since his day
He failed to come,
Human beings, it is said,
Spend a third of their lives in bed.
Women must have spent another third
Waiting for men to turn up. If all those hours
Were laid end to end,
We could have another life
Of our own.

Even in 1900, Madame Butterfly was out of date.
Fidelity, acceptance, death or dishonour -
What quaint anachronisms!
Lieutenant Pinkerton showed the way
The world willingly followed,
Deaf to the final, questioning chord.
No penalties-only consequences,
Which Pinkertons cannot evade
Any more than butterflies."

Dorothy Auchterlonie (or Green), in this poem takes
Puccini's opera - "Madame Butterfly," and places the
characters at Nagasaki, the second site for the atomic
bomb drop by the United States, on August 9, 1945, against
Japan. The first being - Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945.
The result is an extremely powerful expression of living
with the consequences of our actions, and the moral
choices we are faced with in life.

"Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton still believes
That only American wives are real."

A statement that proved only too true throughout Asia,
where American servicemen were stationed. And:

"...No penalties-only consequences,
Which Pinkertons cannot evade
Any more than butterflies."

Poor Butterfly! The devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is
beyond human comprehension. As the author wryly points out:

"Even in 1900, Madame Butterfly was out of date.
Fidelity, acceptance, death or dishonour -
What quaint anachronisms!
Lieutenant Pinkerton showed the way
The world willingly followed,
Deaf to the final, questioning chord."

One can rid the world
of atrocities only by refusing to take part in them.

cont'd ...

The technology since 1945 has changed. Yet the
moral position is still the same as in this poem.

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn tells us in the Preface, to
his book, "The Gulag Archipelago," about an old
Russian proverb that states:

"No, don't! Don't dig up the past!
Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye."

But the proverb goes on to say:

"Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes."

Decades go by, and the scars and sores of the past are
healing over for good. However, unless we learn from
the mistakes of the past, the tragedies (such as those
mentioned in this poem) it is unlikely that we will
have a future to contemplate. The moral choice is ours
to make.

Here's part of a poem, 17 verses all told:

"The Yankee Officer gazed in awe
As we said to him "Listen Sport,
The best damn Gunners in the world
Are the Kiwis in support".

He agreed with us on their accuracy
But one thing he couldn't quite ken;
Was how, in the time that others fire one,
The Kiwis are pumping out ten.

Now the Dig's never stumped for answer
And mishandles the truth, so 'tis said;
So we answered his query on the rate-of-fire
By saying "Their guns are belt-fed".

That's as I remember them, slight differences on page 12, at
http://www.artillerywa.org.au/archives/2009_2.pdf
for all the verses.

OSW, poetry has always been a true reflection of us, our lives, and our emotions.
Poetry has chronicled our victories, painted humanities despair, and taught us the nature of things. I have taken many life lessons from poets.

When at a reasonably uninformed age I first read Shelleys “Ozymandias” it immediately put a perspective into my life, it helped form my “value” pie chart.
>> I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.<<

The wordsmiths that lyricists are is pure poetry....two names have top billing in my life....Hal David and Bernie Taupman.......special minds.

I will leave you with a poem my gran recited to us each time she bathed us.

I had a little dog its name was Tim
I put it in the bath to see if it could swim
He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
I took him to the doctor and he said no hope.

Poetry has seen us through thick and thin, recall Ring a Ring a Rosie, the child’s chronicle of the great plague.....”a tissue a tissue we all fall down.”

Yes OSW I am with you....I have written since my teens...one of my kids plagiarised a bit of my wordsmithing (unknown to me, I would have told the lecturer if I had known)...she got a distinction for it...I was chuffed , so I let her get away with it.