best at F11
Sonnets
Poet Lariat
THE FIRST
Lords of the earth once ruled by right;
serfs and servants, powerless remained.
The lords invoked a godly might,
one owned what brutal force had gained.
Aboriginals were set at naught
as if by God’s creative hand.
Uncivilized, unclean, untaught
accidental to the purposes God planned.
By clever conquerors subdued,
by surpassing weapons, strengths,
alcohol by Satan brewed,
they were debased, destroyed at length.
But by their brothers fall the blessed are cursed.
Last the first will be; and those, the last, the first.
Poems from the Eighth Decade
Copyright © Harold Macdonald 2004
used with permission