Sydney Harbour Blues – 14th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen

Shared with dVerse Poetics – landscape. This one took a turn and describes the mixed feelings I have about one of the most beautiful cities in the world, one that I very much enjoyed meeting and living in for twenty-plus years.

Let me tell you a story,
one that denies what is seen;
because my eyes were open
without understanding what had been.

The lemon eucalyptus was unknown
to those such as me;
star-eyed sailors
on a voyage of discovery.

By the time of my arrival
all the murdering was done,
so I celebrated the widest skies
while never holding a gun.

The abundant harbour waters
the bridges that were since built,
were symbols more than cricket
to hide away our guilt.

Where the forest meets the city,
right down to the water’s edge,
all the sorries were insincere –
the surf repeats its pounding pledge.

The floods and fires – lost control –
so nature’s revenge befits;
glass houses return to the rocks,
like an opera that never quits.

I can hold you in my mind’s eye
now that I’m so far away.
Learned that anywhere is everywhere
and everything is nothing anyway.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Self-Deception Is Our Enemy

When we think we already know
We’ve halted our chance to grow
Meet ego with hostility and contempt
24 hours a day – no one is exempt

27 thoughts on “Sydney Harbour Blues – 14th March 2026”

  1. I’ve only been to Sydney twice once I was about 10 years old and for a day in my twenties. So can’t offer much how I felt about it but it does have a rich and tragic history as your poem alludes to which does make one feel ambivalent. That applies to much of Australia too.

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    1. Yes, it’s really about Australia in general, it was just that Sydney was my entry point (in much the same way as Cook). I read your poem again this morning and thought that perhaps it was reading yours yesterday that got my thinking about Australia again for this prompt.

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  2. One of my best friends emigrated to Australia in 1980 and worked at the Sydney Opera House for some years. I always wanted to visit her there but never got the chance. I’ve read Kim Kelly’s books, and she describes Sydney Harbour in one of them that sparked my imagination, about an Irishman who worked on building one of the bridges. You’ve done the same with your poem, Shaun, especially the tantalising lemon eucalyptus and abundant harbour waters and the surf repeating its pounding pledge.

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    1. Thanks Kim 🙏 The lemon eucalyptus was the first smell on landing in Sydney, even before leaving the airport. I can recall that memory very easily. I do miss Sydney and Australia a lot but it being so expensive there now makes it a little difficult to consider moving back just yet.

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  3. Shaun this captures that unsettling realisation that the beauty of a landscape is often inseparable from the trauma of its history.

    Your rhythm is steady, which creates a deceptive, lullaby-like quality that contrasts sharply with the ‘murdering’ and ‘guilt’ mentioned excellent 🙌

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  4. This has some very deep and disturbing history connected to it! History is often like putting Bondo on an old rusty car! It only covers the damage temporarily. But in time the truth peeks through the polish! The beauty of today is built the bloodshed of yesterday.

    I may have to write a spin off to this one, Shaun. You got my mind running… :>)

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  5. I hear you, Shaun. The landscape holds its history, however we may try to divorce it from memory by building over it. What a beautiful, meticulously crafted poem, Shaun, resonating in the tidal waters and rocks which to me susurrate rhythmically by meter and by the whispers of the past, climaxing in the ominous

    “all the sorries were insincere –
    the surf repeats its pounding pledge”

    — expanded on in the next stanza, adumbrating “nature’s revenge.” I felt an immense sadness reading the concluding stanza, encompassing all the past in all places.

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      1. I didn’t notice, to be honest, and that’s a good thing as it shows how potency of language doesn’t always depend on precision but raw force of rhetoric. IMO. 🙂

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    1. Thanks so much 🙏

      Your comment encouraged me to ask Deepseek about Aboriginal thought around this concept:

      For Aboriginal cultures, the landscape is much more than a physical environment; it is a complex library of knowledge, history, and spirituality. This concept is central to understanding their relationship with the past.

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    1. I original had this line as ‘opera houses return to The Rocks’ – The Rocks being a suburb opposite Circular Quay where the Opera House is located. I think I changed it for the better 👍 Glad to capture your attention 🙏

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  10. Pingback: History | Roth Poetry

  12. Like you, Sydney glows in my memory from the 7 months we lived there in 1968, although my memories of Australia have gradually been filtered by the growing awareness (absent in a 14 year old), of the dark side of Australian history as it has become unfolded in recent years, the racism, towards the Aboriginals and towards immigrants, who back then, were white only, the brutal colonialism… So I too have a comprehension gap between what I saw and what I know now…

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