Category Archive: PETER’S WRITING
Will be Damned
Portrait by Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl (1815)
Arthur Schopenhauer (born 22 February 1788) “Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways – is nothing.” Arthur lived in shadowlands; His hated mother washed her hands Of him, and his suicidal Dad’s Echo – so he read Upanishads And Kant, forming a new world-view As bleak as stout, and yet he grew Into determined…
Continue Reading →Save the Glory of Art
I’ll never leave, or if I do, I shall always return to you, For it’s you, it’s you, always you, Save the Glory of Art. Feel no jealousy; Raphael won’t draw from me Emotion I might save for you – It stays tucked in my heart. And while’s I’m talking true, We can stop or start, Right the wrong in part; Save the Glory of Art. I’ll never leave, or where I go You shall be the first to know, What’s on the wall is just for show Save the Glory of Art.
Continue Reading →2017
'Sisyphus' by Titian
This is the year we did unravel, The moment when the joys of travel Were undone; We lost the trust Of those who quacked, scolded, fussed Over our lives, and sought our love But abandoned us when push met shove. This the year when we all learned That skin is rent and flesh is burned By any common garden device Wielded by those who sacrifice, The year in which we fully saw Common bonds do tie no more. Bullets at the temples flew, Boats sank in the water blue, Bombs and bluffs we never knew Were true; and cancer grew….
Continue Reading →The Library Agenda
"With you in charge, I am at ease." by Li Yansheng (1976) (Displayed in a series of prints venerating Chairman Mao at the Australian National Library, 2017)
(On the occasion of a rather chilly visit to the National Library, Canberra) Entering the library, one feels alone, No comfort on these shelves, no phone, No sense of welcome or assistance, Proprietorial resistance. No books in sight; no chores to do, Ideas not enclosed, neither old nor new. Heroes extolled in olden times Are traduced for their voguish crimes. I lack the time, I lack the means To gather up the left-wing magazines In serried ranks, beneath gold frames Of left-wing folks with famous names. There’s Ben Chifley, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Jack Lang and Trotsky, Marx and Huey Long,…
Continue Reading →The Night of the Murdered Poets
August 12th: Like those who brook no argument, Sinning, call others to repent And lash the ones who speak their mind, Put-out eyes of the hopeless blind, So they shout-down common verse And let the imp of the perverse, Shred the words still warm on lips: Let books slip from fingertips. Hating all who think wrong things Their toxic torment a gift which brings More torture still, more calumny For the straw-stuffed enemy. So they charged the poets with Treason and rhyme; they chose to live Through words that carried truth revealed And strove and sought, refused to yield. They hanged them high…
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