When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

 

I don’t need to summon up remembrances

They simply wander in uninvited

In death just as they did in life, good friends

To sit together with our jokes, our drinks, our pipes

 

We still argue with each other, our minds

So familiar after all those happy years

Thesis, antithesis, and Dunhill tobacco

Ice cubes rattling in the soft summer dusk

 

Lewis and Tolkien show up late, stern Milton too

Remembrances? Not really – we are forever here

 

 

In Moscow, 1937, during the annual Soviet writers’ congress—a time of severe purges—Pasternak took a courageous stand. Amidst the dull, regime-prescribed speeches praising Leninist-Stalinism, he did something extraordinary. He recited Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare:

 

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.”

 

The impact was profound. All two thousand writers in the hall rose to their feet, joining Pasternak in this act of defiance. The number “30” became a symbol of resistance, a testament to the enduring power of poetry and memory.

 

Introducing a Sunday Series from Douglas Murray: Things Worth Remembering | The Free Press (thefp.com)

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls

 

“Choose you this day whom you will serve”

 

-Joshua 24:15

 

For those who are desperate to be accepted as cool –

 

You cannot straddle the walls of the holy Temple

You cannot straddle the barbed wire of Auschwitz

You cannot straddle the banks of the Red Sea

You cannot choose two sides and call them one

 

Since the Hitler time there have not been two sides

 

You cannot wear both the tallit and the snakeskin

You cannot break bread with your grinning executioners

You cannot dance to circled drums and bullhorn chants

You cannot forswear your family murdered in the gas chambers

 

Since the burning time there have not been two sides

 

He who chooses the fashionable, the clever, the cool

Chooses to be a kapo, a funktionshaftling

His people will despise him, so too his masters

                   (Who in the end will kill him in his shame)

And his memory will be a curse, not a blessing

 

But you –

 

Choose bravely so that your name will be written in The Book

And written in the hearts of your proud descendants

 

When Fortune and Men’s Eyes are in Disgrace - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When Fortune and Men’s Eyes are in Disgrace

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

 

A good thing with being disgraced in men’s eyes

Is that that mostly they don’t notice you at all

As a nobody you are but a shadow at best

Or an accessory in their empty scenes

 

If they don’t notice you, then you are not disgraced

And you have better things to do anyway:

Children to raise, songs to sing, books to write

Each day’s honest labor at your honest craft

 

The resolution is

 

That some men might be disgraced in your eyes

That is, if you choose to notice them at all

And Why is There a Police Car in Your Driveway? - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

And Why is There a Police Car in Your Driveway?

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 28

 

The days are a mess and so are the nights

Each day is burdened with labors unrelenting

Toils industrial and toils emotional

Everyone seems to want a bite of you

 

At night the stresses follow you to bed:

The boss’s write-ups seem to poison the pillows

The unpaid bills, the clapped-out car, the fears

The children’s report cards, the broken washer

 

You give life your all – you work, you struggle, you strive -

And why is there a cop car in your drive?

These Here So-Called Schools These Days - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

These Here So-Called Schools These Days

  

“Lead, Follow, or Get the H*** Out of the Way” 

-a sign on the bulkhead in recruit training

  

Those coffee-shop cynics drowning in dejection:

Some of them wallow in existential abjection

And some meet every hope with an objection

Or with a sneering, irrelevant deflection

 

          But I did something other than b**** and moan

 

I voted in my local school board election

Weary with Dachshunds - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Weary with Dachshunds

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 27

 

With an improving book I go to bed

                   (as P. G. Wodehouse said)

And two improving dachshunds on my pillow

                   (as Wodehouse almost said)

They then begin their journey at my head

Wriggling down to my feet and back again

 

They slurple messily from my bedside glass

And crumple up my copy of Hercule Poirot

Neither slows: they lick my nose, they tickle my toes

And will they finally doze? Nobody knows!

 

But

 

When comes the midnight moon, then all in a cuddly heap

Their little doggie noses snuffle at last in sleep

The President of Columbia University is Saddened - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The President of Columbia University is Saddened

 

“Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?”

― Leon Uris, Exodus

 

Jews are not welcome in the cool universities

The laboratories are shut against them

Libraries, classrooms, meetings, coffee shops

Here, sir, the bullhorn rules (Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!)

 

Administrators smile weakly and shrug:

We cannot guarantee your safety here

The Merovingian president says she is saddened

That Jewish students are harassed and beaten

 

The halls of academia are lined with swastikas

And 7 October is remembered with glee

The Golden Gate of Jerusalem - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Golden Gate of Jerusalem

 

The Gate of Repentance

 

The Golden Gate captures the evening moon

Which shines upon the road a convict walked

At the rubbled base a snake pursues a rat

          a very troubled rat

While Roman squaddies stand the middle watch

 

The Gate of Mercy

 

The Golden Gate captures the morning sun

Whence the Messiah comes, or comes again

He is the Gate Himself, the Golden Gate

He comes from the Mount of Olives in golden light

 

The Golden Gate has been blocked for centuries -

This will not always be so

 

A Nation of Couch Schlubs Blames the Chinese Communists - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Nation of Couch Schlubs Blames the Chinese Communists

 

A question may be brought about ownership

And the turgid content of the daily trawl

But even before the question of censorship

          One must ask:

Why is anyone on TikTok at all?

The Great Gate of Kiev - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Great Gate of Kiev

 

Mussorgsky’s The Great Gate of Kiev is no hymn to the people of Ukraine (telegraph.co.uk)

 

If there was never a Great Gate of Kiev

Except in Mussorgy’s triumphal hymn

There ought to have been, and there will be some day

Trophied with captured Putinista flags

 

For now

 

Wherever a Ukrainian enters Kiev

By rail or bus, or in worn-out army boots

He is the Gate, the Knight’s Gate, the Golden gate

With a chapel and the most wonderful bells

 

And the pictures at an exhibition

Will be ikons of Ukrainian martyrs

You are the Poem - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

You are the Poem

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 24

 

A camera time-stops images as electrical codes

Formed by Kyanon Kabushiki Gaisha

And if that is not high art, then what is?

But codes are not you in your many dimensions

 

Your dimensions of perceptions and being

Your thoughts and happiness, your eternal soul

Your way of comforting a rescue kitten

Your way of writing verse and tasting  soup

 

A camera time-stops images as electrical codes

But you are a living spring of happy odes

Stammering Before an Audience of One - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Stammering Before an Audience of One

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 23

 

As imperfect poets upon the page

We scribble limping iambs and push them to go

To an impatient audience waiting downstage

For well-spoken truth in a metric flow

 

A poem, a play - each is a rite of love

Humbly offered like an awkward child’s bouquet

Go on, then, give the rhymes a little shove

Even though your feet, your tongue, your hopes – all are clay

 

And if gratitude and admiration are in her eyes

She has granted you the worthiest prize!

 

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University - more of an intemperate hissy-fit than a poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

“Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

 

Cited in

Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

 

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

 

As a child of situational poverty

I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

 

Including

 

Moses

Joshua

Jeremiah

Samuel

David

Solomon

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve

Saint Paul

Elie Weisel

 

Chaim Potok

Herman Wouk

Leon Uris

Franz Kafka

Leonard Cohen

Anne Frank

Bernard Malamud

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Philip Roth

Osip Mandelstam

 

Saul Bellow

Isaac Asimov

Woody Allen

Edna Ferber

Yip Harburg

George Cukor

Oscar Hammerstein

Alan Lerner

Joseph Brodsky

Rob Morrow

 

Carl Reiner

Rod Serling

Franz Werfel

Alan Arkin

Claire Bloom

Leonard Nimoy

Chaim Topol

Ed Asner

Mel Brooks

Peter Falk

Werner Klemperer

 

Jack Klugman

Walter Matthau

Tony Randall

Mel Torme

John Banner

Kirk Douglas

Lorne Greene

Eli Wallach

Sam Wanamaker

Morey Amsterdam

 

Leo Genn

Otto Preminger

Jack Benny

Leslie Howard

Ernst Lubitsch

Cecil B. DeMille

Mortimer Adler

Allen Bloom

Harold Bloom

Irving Berlin

 

Boris Pasternak

Emil Ludwig

Eric Wolfgang Korngold

Elmer Bernstein

Max Steiner

George Gershwin

Dimitri Tiomkin

Samuel Fuller

Alexander Korda

Zoltan Korda

 

Emeric Pressburger

Erich von Stroheim

Billy Wilder

William Wyler

Fred Zinnemann

J. J. Abrams

Peter Bogdanovich

Michael Curtiz

Stanley Donen

Stanley Kramer

 

Howard Caine

Leon Askin

Robert Clary

Dinah Shore

Stephen Sondheim

Volodymyr Zelinsky

Simon Schama

Louise Gluck

Siegfried Sassoon

Isaac Rosenberg

 

Vasily Grossman

Stanley Kubrick

Viktor Frankl

Jonah

Steven Spielberg

Leonard Bernstein

 

 

 

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses

Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

 

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth

And humanity’s aspirations to the good

All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants

Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate

Humility Through the Looking Glass - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Humility Through the Looking Glass

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 22

 

My glass surprises me; it tells the truth

“Who is that old man?” I ask myself

And it rebukes me for that foolish question

I must admit to the glass that I am old

 

But when I turn and look outside myself

And greet the happy sun and breathe the dawn

Of a day rich with possibilities

And think of you – then I am young again

 

I tell my glass it is a silly glass

And it tells me I am a silly ass

Marcus Aurelius Down at the Auto Repair - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Marcus Aurelius Down at the Auto Repair

 

Marcus Aurelius down at the auto repair –

Now there’s an image, him being an emperor and all

One of those philosophers who think about stuff

Who ask questions and read and write and stuff

 

If a man complains about the cost of new tires:

          Meditations V.9 – “Be not unhappy, or discouraged…”

And

          II.4 – “Remember how long you have been putting off these things…”

 

If a warranty has expired:

          VI.53 – “Accustom yourself to listen carefully…”

And

          VII.24 – “A scowling look is quite unnatural.”

 

If the engine is blown:

          X.33 – “Now it is not given to a cylinder to move everywhere…”

And

          VII.54 – “…it is in your power to accept…your present condition…”

 

 

And with that, Marcus steps outside for a cigarette.

 

 

(Many quotations attributed to Marcus Aurelius are bogus; these have been verified.)

Kirbyville Automotive and a Roman Philosopher

 On his large, electrical sign at Kirbyville Automotive my friend Shannon Davis posted this quote from Marcus Aurelius:

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

One does not imagine that quotations from a Roman philosopher and emperor are commonly found on roadside advertising in East Texas.

Update: Apparently Marcus Aurelius did not say this at all.  This is just another misquote circling around on the InterGossip and believed by people like me who tend to trust maybe a little too much.

But I wish the man had said it anyway.

But Truly Write - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

But Truly Write

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 21

 

…poems are gatherings of words, in good order, in simple order, plain and appealing.

 

-Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, p. 77

 

A line of contemporary prosetry

Is a catalogue of florid structures and worn-out cliches

Pancaked with adverbs and tiresome metaphors

Flung down in a confusion of unconnected gasps

 

If you have something to say, then say it

Then tidy up the lines – like washing your face

With soap and water and a cotton towel

And then admire the sunlit, fresh-air truth

 

Craft your lines of transcendent poetry

As clean sharp-edg’ed truth in well-scrubbed words

County Road 400, an Extension of the County Dump - photograph

Shakespeare, Venus, and the Travelling Salesman - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Shakespeare, Venus, and the Travelling Salesman

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 19

 

Dear Will,

 

About your obsession with mortality:

Transitions and death are essentials in life

And we must face the obsequies of ashes or earth

But there are other topics upon which to write

 

Let us not consider funerals today

Let us sit upon the lawn and smoke our pipes

And write about new leaves on ancient oaks

(You’ll pen far better lines; you always do)

 

Today we’ll ignore our own mortality

And tell inappropriate jokes about Venus

          and a travelling salesman

I Will Not Compare You to a Summer's Day - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Will Not Compare You to a Summer’s Day

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

 

I will not compare you to a summer’s day

Summer is heat, humidity, and drought

A disapproving sun burning the earth

A dusty, weedy landscape fit only for snakes

 

Instead, you are a perfect autumn day

A day of good old sweaters and leafy walks

Invigorating winds all fresh from the north

And inside, cups of cocoa and a merry fire

 

I will not compare you to a summer’s day

Your autumn is far more lovely and temperate

Time is not a Bloody Tyrant - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Time is not a Bloody Tyrant

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 16

 

Time cannot be a tyrant; it is but a created thing

Like bluebonnets, butterflies, and bumblebees

Painted with pencil or pen by a Hand divine

And set in place as a measure of being

 

Time cannot be our enemy; we live along it

And like the ground it stabilizes us in place

And like our eyes it gives us vision to see

Each other in our Spirited nobility

 

Life is not what we take nor what is taken

But what we bring -

Time cannot be a tyrant; it is but a created thing

A Dollar Box of Crayolas - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Dollar Box of Crayolas®™

 

I wanted the biggest box of Crayolas

I had to have the biggest box of Crayolas

I could build worlds with the biggest box of Crayolas

I needed that biggest box of Crayolas!

 

But the wise voice of situational poverty spoke:

“I am not spending a dollar on a box of Crayolas.”

 

The biggest box of Crayolas is now about four dollars

Allowing for inflation, much cheaper than in ‘55

I should go buy the biggest box of Crayolas

Maybe I can find a Big Chief Tablet®™ to go with it

On the Happy Occasion of Completing a Wordle in Two Lines - a pastiche of Shelley

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

On the Happy Occasion of Completing a Wordle in Two Lines

 

(Scribbled with a little help from Shelley)

 

Look upon my Verbs, ye Mighty, and despair!

No more lines remain. Round the decay

Of my online Competition, of vocabulary bare

The lone and level squares stretch far away

A Lucky Dachshund's Foot - doggerel (with a real dog!)

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Lucky Dachshund’s Foot

 

Luna-Dog sat with a stick in her jaws

The sort of thing a little dachshund gnaws

(chewing everything is one of a puppy’s laws)

But a look in her eyes gave me some pause –

 

It wasn’t a stick; it was one of a bunny’s paws!

 

Yuck.

 

Time for church.

 

-The End-

Methinks I Have Astronomy - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Methinks I Have Astronomy

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 14

 

Monday, 8 April 2024

 

Methinks I have astronomy; it must be so:

Today the moon eclipsed the jovial sun

And through the clouds and rain a darkness ruled

But with my little car’s headlights I backed it down

 

Forswearing lenses I watched the world instead

The springtime greens darkening almost to grey

And boiling clouds darkening almost to black

And from the thunder rain wreaking rivulets

 

Methinks I have astronomy; it must be so:

I see beyond this darkness your eternal glow

But Who Else Could You Be? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

But Who Else Could You Be?

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 13

 

O that I were myself? Of course I am

Who else could I possibly want to be?

No one rocks a morning mirror like me

(and probably no one wants to do so)

 

My beloved mother said I was special

(I think that was a compliment – maybe?)

And you’re pretty nifty yourself, you know -

I like the cut of your metaphorical jib

 

LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER An Afternoon LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Walk Along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension LIGHT A FINE PILSNER BEER

   

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Afternoon LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Walk

Along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension

 

Dewberries LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sassafras seedlings LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Virginia creeper LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER pine cones LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crumbling oak leaves from last summer  LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER winds sighing in the pine tops LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a little plum tree LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Canada goldenrod LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER poplar LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER swamp oak LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER mourning doves LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER slanting evening sunlight LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Chickasaw plum LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER nightshade LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER red spider lilies LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a skink bluebonnets LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER clouds in the west LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER spiderwort LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a long eared rabbit loping across the road LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sorrel LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a feather from a bluebird LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER waving field grasses LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER the neighbor’s cows browsing in peace LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a crane flying up from a pond LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crows fussing at me from the woods LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER…

I Do Not Count the Clock - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

I Do Not Count the Clock

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 12

 

I do not count the clock when I’m outside

I do not count the leaves, fallen and sere

I do not count the silver in your hair

Though I celebrate them all the same

 

(But not the clock; there is no love in clocks)

 

These golden days have beauties of their own

Their richness born from the promises of spring

The culminations of summer’s growing days

Crowned with silver by the first falling frost

 

I do not count the clock when I’m outside

I do not count the clock when I’m with you

So Fast Thou Grow'st - Cf. Shakespeare Sonnet 11

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

So Fast Thou Grow’st

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 11

 

I put something out there in the universe…

 

-Chris-in-the-Morning, Northern Exposure

 

 

You will make something beautiful in any event

Even if only a silly ceramic frog

Holding a perfectly pointless umbrella

Upon the tree-stump where you feed the birds

 

Your silly ceramic frog will someday break

The stump will rot away into the earth

The birds will live through their generations

And you will be but whisperings in the wind

 

But you make life beautiful in any event:

It is a forever that you put into the universe