Among Fog-Shrouded Ruins - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Among Fog-Shrouded Ruins

 

 

And here we are as on a darkling plain

 

-Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”

 

 

Wrapped in rags from The Creature Cantina

Their thin bare legs ending in chemical globs

They shuffled along with their hooded heads bowed

Deep-bent beneath Chaucerian pilgrims’ packs

 

Somewhat like roaming Jawas searching out scrap

But with deep-socketed eyes fixed on palantiri

Tiny Orwellian telescreens that guide

And guard them from the disturbance of thoughts

 

Sometimes Morlockian mechanical horns

Call them into pods of weakling Eloi

Obedient sacrifices rattling their chains

As the ogre-guarded dungeon they near

 

The lead Eloi approached in fear, his eyes all rheumy and red -

“Ah! you’re here for the chess club,” a welcoming Morlock said

The Poets Speak of American Elections - rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The Poets Speak of American Elections

 

Democracy is based upon free selection

Not upon heredity or kin

But

The problem with an American election

Is that one of the candidates will win

 

What Kind of God Needs a Bullhorn? - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

What Kind of God Needs a Bullhorn?

 

If a street-corner god needs a little man

Thrusting jackchickery into reluctant hands

 

Frightening children on their way to school

Bullhorn-bellowing at people and playing the fool

 

Then that god is no god

And that man is no man

I Will Bake You a Mooncake for the Autumn Festival - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

I Will Bake You a Mooncake for the Autumn Festival

 

 

 

(Actually, I'll buy it at your favourite bakery)

 

And I will divide it with a four-part secret message

 

 

Will it be...

 

Lady Moon

 

Are

 

My

 

You?

 

 

No? Or maybe...

 

 

My

 

Are

 

Lady Moon

 

You?

 

 

Nope. How about

 

 

My

 

Are 

 

Lady Moon

 

You?

 

 

Oh, no! But now you can move the four pieces

Of your mooncake to read:

 

 

You

 

Are

 

My

 

Lady Moon!

 

 

Peace and happiness to you and all who are blessed in knowing you!

Autumn Equinox and a Lawn Chair - poor attempt at Haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Autumn Equinox and a Lawn Chair

 

Coffee on the lawn

Cool dawn wind, old man, old dog

A September song

The United Nations - or Not - rhyming quatrain

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The United Nations – Or Not

 

 

The United Nations…where all the world’s nations can gather together,

discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity.

 

-About Us | United Nations

 

 

From war’s disasters this lesson we learn:

Each nation to nation is as a sister or brother -

So why do the ambassadors all in their turn

Do little except to walk out on each other?

When I was God’s Latest and Best Creation - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

When I was God’s Latest and Best Creation

 

When I was young I was God’s best creation

His latest and His best, the golden result

Of millions of years of evolution

And thousands of years of civilization

 

All of history led to glorious Me

For whom the Salvation story was but a preface

Shakespeare could only dream of being me

And Mr. de Mille was ready for my closeup

 

I was destined to be the world’s greatest…

(I wasn’t exactly clear about the greatest what) 

But I was going to be the greatest (something)

And all the peoples of the world would follow me

 

All wrongs would be righted, all failings addressed –

But as things turned out, no one

                   was much

                                           impressed

Our Lady of Walsingham - poem

 (almost surely a re-post)

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Our Lady of Walsingham

 

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

Queen of our hearts and hopes, and of each day

Sweet Empress over forest, down, and dene,      

And happy Sunrise over the pilgrim’s way

 

O let us crown Our Queen with leaf and flower

Gathered this morning in the dawnlit dew

For we in this Island are Her true dower

Pledging our faith with thorn and rose and yew

 

She gives us Her feast day, cool and quiet and green -

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

Resettlement in the East - Poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Resettlement in the East

 

 

“It’s my great honor to welcome the world to America

as we celebrate 250 years of glorious freedom…”

 

President Trump to the United Nations

22 September 2026

 

 

Old cattle trains rattling across the steppes

Are now old jets rattling across the skies

While old men rattle out decrees of death

And fondle their most precious testosterone 

 

Young and old rattling their shackles and chains

The shades rattled shut against the light

The rattling of an empty galley bin

Beats time to humiliation, suffering, and despair

 

In Washington, Getaga, Yaounde

Bangui, Malabo, Mbabane

Monrovia, Kigali, and Freetown

 

Our masters rattle their ice for another round

 

ICE deports Afghans and others to Africa, expanding "third country" deportations - CBS News

 

ICE Detention Facilities Statistics 2026 | Key Facts - The World Data

The Laughing Altar Girl - couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The Laughing Altar Girl

 

A Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

On the Altar merry laughter

Is a gift forever after

 

(Even Miz Busy smiled)

In a Garbage Can in DaNang, There Lived a Hobbit - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

In a Garbage Can in DaNang, There Lived a Hobbit

 

 

“Take up and read!”

 

-St. Augustine of North Africa, Chapter XII, Confessions

Quonset huts in rows across the dunes

Smelling of diesel: hot white sands, hot white air

Bulldozers clanking along barbed-wire fencing

Dragonish coils against desperate scrub

 

ARVN guards in mirror-lensed gas-station shades

In watchtowers writhing in the summer sun

Scanning the huts, each its own tiger cage

Sandbags, heat and sand, metal bunks, heat, sand

 

A lidless garbage can of civilization’s leavings

And atop some rags and soda cans a book

 

I stopped. I looked. I took. I read:

 

“…one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…”