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)