The Friday poem: ‘Lines from way back’ by Vincent O’Sullivan
New verse by Dunedin writer Vincent O’Sullivan.
Lines from way back
The Senate seethes, as in an emperor’s reign.
The deals are done, speeches endorse the corpse.
Pussy and circuses stake out their claim.
Immigrants, bankers, slip their varied hoops.
Maggots exult that nature bred them white,
Their slither vermicules to get it Right.
He walks the talk of being the nation’s daddy.
He hands out holsters, ‘Souvenir the string’.
Zeus’s scrotum carried by his caddy,
The perks of office hankering for his swing.
And a wink to bro Caligula, OK?
‘All things trot for senators who neigh.’
Vincent O’Sullivan, 2018
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Vincent O'Sullivan
Born in Auckland in 1937, Vincent O’Sullivan was the author of the novels Let the River Stand, Believers to the Bright Coast, and All This by Chance. He wrote many plays and collections of short stories and poems, was joint editor of the five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited a number of major anthologies, and was the author of acclaimed biographies of John Mulgan and Ralph Hotere. He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2013–2015. In 2000, he was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2021 he was redesignated as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Vincent died in April 2024.
