In Honor of Hagia Sophia - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogsport.com

In Honor of Hagia Sophia

From A Liturgy for the Emperor

Our eternal Constantinople is
Never to be lost, never defeated:
In every Christian flows Dragases' blood
Every village is the Holy City
Every church is Hagia Sophia
Every prayer is a Mass for the Emperor
Every children's foot-race the Hippodrome
Every poor family's poor supper
A banquet under the Red-Apple Tree -
Constantinople lives, now and forever

A Liturgy for the Emperor (a Russia series, 26) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com


This is neither history nor theology;
this is Romance:

A Liturgy for the Emperor

In memory of
Patrick Joseph Donovan,
Stratiotis

Processional

How, then, will we find death? With rifle in hand,
Perhaps, or flowing with the warm, worn prayers
That slip with beads through one's fingers and soul.
Rifle or Rosary, either will do.
One's death might rise in the boldness of youth,
Or in the wearied wisdom of old age,
In wild combat against ancient evils,
Or softly, while planting a red-apple tree
For grandchildren to summer-celebrate,
In wild red martyrdom, or obscure white.

The nights still whisper how the Emperor fell,
Fell with a faithful few upon the walls,
The old land walls of Constantinople.
But we are not to speak of martyrs whose
Transcendent beauty reproaches our times,
Our drifting dark age, drab, dreary, and dim
Our tomb-like lives cluttered with small darkness,
Our talk all common, colourless, and cold:
The thoughts assigned programmed into our souls,
Daymares programmed into us for our good,
Pitiful, pattering, prosthetic prose,
Cacophonies of casual cruelties --
No brave iambic lines for golden dreams.

But dare we also whisper truths, and speak
Of what a wind-wild people once we were,
And we will want our syllables to sing
In honour of the Martyr-Emperor
And those who followed him into his death,
And in this knowing of him we can live
Among those souls who are forever young.

Introit

In Nomine Partis, et Filli, et Spiritus Sancti

We will go to the Altar of God
To God, Who gives joy to our youth
We will go to the Altar of God
We will go to Byzantium

Kyrie

Lord have mercy -- when the shadows surround us
Christ have mercy -- when we forget the Three Romes
Lord have mercy -- when we forget You

Gloria

Glory to God in the highest
And peace to His Byzantine people
And all His peoples
Lord God, Heavenly King
who once blessed us with Emperors
Send us another
Send Your waiting people their Emperor

The First Reading

As Constantine his walls he watched, he wept,
Lost in the Gethsemane of his soul
His tears they fell upon the ancient bricks
Warm with centuries of sun, saintliness,
And the passions of a glorious race

The City! Long reigning on the Golden Horn
The Summer Country of our childhood dreams
There playing, praying, working, selling, and,
Yes, sinning too. Passionate Romanoi --
What a magnificent people we were.

(fast)

When armies marched to the Byzantine beat
Sophia ruled from her Byzantine seat
When Byzantine sails sheltered Odysseus' sea
The wave-roads of trade were open and free
When Romanoi feasted, blood mixed with wine
Daggers drawn over a dancing concubine
A newer Helen who provoked desire,
She seared men's eyes with her own Greek Fire
When Blues and Greens howled in the Hippodrome --
Such rowdy citizens in Second Rome! --
Then even Emperors in purple shoes
Feared stoning by Greens or hanging by Blues
The rough, loud democracy of the street --
Mobs also marched to the Byzantine beat

The Second Reading

(slowly)

But –

Above all rose Justinian's gem
The holy place where God called us to Him
The Mother Church of dawn-lit Christendom
Sophia -- the Queen of Byzantium
Where Patriarch, patrician, people, and priest
Gave worship. Then the greatest and the least
Abandoned sin to hear the sweet bells ring,
Stood penitent before our God, our King:
In consecrated hands, through wine and bread

Christos Pantocrater fed us Himself

And then all hearts were cleansed, all souls were fed

(Very slowly)

But centuries passed, and this City of God
Heart of the Empire, became the Empire,
As lands and peoples were lost forever
to the creeping new age. When Constantine,
The last Constantine, was called to the Throne,
All that was left was The City herself,
The Morea, and islands, and memories.
The fleet whose sails had shaded the Inner Sea
Was but a few hopeless hulks in the Horn

From the dust, dark shadows metastasized,
Shadows who stole and slew their way to power
And swept the land bare of free folk and fields
And more and more the shadows grasped and held,
A dead world of slaves whose backs were bloodied
Beneath the whips of masters, slaves whose eyes
Were cast carefully, cautiously to the ground
Lest demeanour manly and bearing proud
Attract the executioners' busy blades.

Finally, after devouring lands and souls,
The shadows coveted Constantinople,
The Red-Apple Tree where continents meet,
The City they could never build for themselves
And nothing stood between them and their lust
But one bold man: Constantine Dragases.
The faithful few who stood the walls with him,
Gathered around proud, stubborn Constantine:
Workers and monks and nuns, beggars, merchants,
Proud, arrogant Byzantines, and the few
Wild Latins From the barbarian West
Whose Greek was in their hearts, not on their lips,
Who gave their loyalty late to their liege lord,
The Emperor, who could have safely lain
A shadow's golden-caged slave, obedient,
Well-fed, well-bedded from the shadows'
Catalogues of pretty girls and prettier boys,
A memory of what had been a man.

But Constantine stood proudly on his walls,
Defiantly, bravely, sadly there on
His crumbling ancient walls, and gave his faith
To God and the City, to his people,
Even to the faithless ones, even to his death.

And others came, From Rome and Spain and France,
From Germany, and even from the Turks,
Brave, lonely men with reasons of their own
For ending their lives there on the Land Walls.

But they were not enough. And late that night,
After the last Mass in Hagia Sophia,
The Emperor knew that his was the blood,
The blood of sacrifice that would be shed
In remembrance of bloody Golgotha,
For the people he was given to rule,
For the people for whom he chose to die,
Sheltering, protecting, until his end.


A Gospel

No angel appeared to the Emperor,
No voice of God from a burning bush
He parted himself from his followers
And for a few minutes grieved alone

And this was given Constantine to know:

The eternal Constantinople is
Never to be lost, never defeated --
In every Christian flows Dragases' blood
Every village is the Holy City
Every church is Hagia Sophia
Every prayer is a Mass for the Emperor
Every children's foot-race the Hippodrome
Every poor family's poor supper
A banquet under the Red-Apple Tree.
Constantinople will live forever.
Know that, and, laughing, give your last earth-hour,
And your joyful eternity, to God.

Credo

We believe in God's holy empire too,
Byzantium, eternally golden
The Red-Apple Tree in the eastern sun
The City that echoes with laughing light
Through memory and history and beyond.
We believe in God and His Emperor,
And we believe that in the absence of
The Emperor, even then we must be
The Emperor's subjects, stubborn and true,
Wherever God has chosen to send us.
We then must rule our passions and our hearts,
Tend our gardens as if they were Eden --
Because they are -- and care for our children
As if angels were visiting tonight,
Until our God restores our Emperor,
Restores His City where the Earth-halves meet,
And finally, some day, some happy day,
Returns Himself to sit and rule enthroned
In His Three Romes, and in Jerusalem.


Communion

Constantine shook himself, and gave commands,
Commending all to duty and to God.
Above him the dome of Hagia Sophia
Glowed eerily on that last, wild night
While lightning slashed among the sliding clouds
Byzantium rose again for one glorious hour
And the world marveled that such things could be,
That Christ and Rome and Constantinople
Could be found in one man at the end of an age.

Blood, vomit, screams, and death;
blood, vomit, death
Blood, vomit, screams, and death;
blood, vomit, screams
Blood, vomit, screams, and death;
blood, vomit, death
Blood, vomit, screams, and death;
blood, vomit, screams
The glory is that there is no glory.
Chaos. Horror. Stench. Sweat. Pain. Vomit. Death.
Hi­s -- His -- body broken again for us.

On that dark morning of a dark new age,
Constantine turned and faced its slithering shadows
With a Byzantine end to his ruler's art,
With the peace of Christ and a hero's heart.

DISMISSAL

The Mass is ended. Byzantium is ended.
Escape, if you can -- make Byzantium live.
Escape to live in some peace, if you can.
Escape in peace to love and serve in exile.
Escape in peace to love and serve the Lord.

"O Lord save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance;
And to Thy Faithful king grant victory over the barbarians.
And by the power of Thy Cross, protect all those who follow
Thee"1

Not an End at All

1Troparion for the Sunday of the Elevation of the Cross, Divine Prayers and Serves of the Catholic Orthodox Church of Christ, copyright 1938.

Many thanks to Mr. Tod Mixson and others of St. Michael's Orthodox Church for assistance at many points, both liturgical and artistic, to Dr. Dan Bailey, of happy memory, and Dr. John Dahmus of Stephen F. Austin State University.

The Prophet's New Car

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Prophet’s New Car

A Florida pastor has demanded that a New Jersey car dealer give him a new car for not burning a copy of the Koran. The curious bit is that the pastor may have a legal claim.

Brad Benson, who owns a car franchise in Brunswick (New Jersey, not Germany), has been very successful in working for a living, providing employment for others, and paying lots and lots of taxes. His car ads are famous for their whimsy – once he offered a free car to Saddamn Hussein if he (Saddamn, not Mr. Benson) would surrender. As Saddamn took his last walk a few years later he surely thought that he should have taken that car deal instead.

More recently Mr. Benson offered a new car to the pyromanic pastor of an Adjective Church and / or Outreach and / or Fellowship if the pastor would refrain from his announced plan of publicly Zippo-ing a copy of the Koran.

The minister hosts a set of moldy whiskers that look as if they had been packed in General Burnside’s suitcase in 1865, stored in an attic, and pulled out only recently for a masquerade. The minister may perhaps be striving for a stern, intimidating Old Testament appearance but this works only if any Old Testament figure looked like a querulous old rescue rabbit in need of dentures. Even so, he (the pastor, not an Old Testament figure) managed to trouble the councils of our wise and powerful leaders.

The President appealed to Brother Whiskers on television not to flick his Bic, and a general telephoned the thundering profit – um, prophet – asking the hothead to refrain from the flame lest American soldiers be endangered, as if they were not already in danger anyway.

There is no mention of presidents or generals telephoning Mr. Benson or any of his many employees to thank them for working hard and paying taxes. But perhaps presidents or generals were busy that day calling you and thanking you for your honest work and your service to America instead of fanning the flaming ego of an unhappy man who missed his true vocation as a minor character in Tobacco Road.

In the event the matchless Brother Bonfire did not combust a copy of the Koran but apparently was not aware of Mr. Benson’s offer of a new set of wheels until weeks later. And now, retroactively, he demands that free car. After all, this is what Moses or Habakkuk would do. The posturing pastor now says he’s going to give the car to abused Moslem women, even though Moslem women are not permitted by their menfolk to drive.

Mr. Benson, whose gag went south (to Florida, actually), is going to give Frater Firebug a new car, a $15,000 import, and be rid of the nuisance (the arsonist, not the automobile).

Given this historic precedent, I pledge not to burn the Jack Chick Catholics-Are-Going-To-(Newark) toilet paper someone left on my desk if my demands are met:

1. I demand a personal telephone call from an admiral or general begging me not to burn the Jack Chick booklet.
2. I demand a new car in return for not burning this fine specimen of Jack Chick’s theology. Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll donate the car to a worthy cause. Sure. You bet.

Gentle reader, you could do the same. One of my books, A Liturgy for the Emperor, is for sale through Amazon.com and Lulu.com; the other, Christmas in the Summer Country, is available only through Lulu.com. After coaxing a few pals to ordain you a reverend or something you could buy my books and then demand that someone important reward you for not burning them.

Don’t ask me; I haven’t made enough on my books to buy more than a box or two of matches.

This clerical hostage-taking of a book may not be what Isaiah or St. Paul would have done, but Chaucer’s Pardoner and Summoner would be proud – and would want a cut of the take.

-30-

Saint Swithin's Day

Mack Hall


There are no parades for Saint Augustine of North Africa on the 28th of August. No one wears a tee-shirt with the invitational “Kiss Me, I’m African-Carthaginian-Roman,” and one looks in vain for a beer stein bearing an image of the saint on one side and “Beat the Snot Out of a Manichaean” on the other.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury is passed by, too, with no bumper stickers reading “Our Augustine Can Whip Your Odin with One Baptism Tied Behind his Back.”

November 3rd is the feast day of Saint Martin de Porres (which is much easier than saying “Saint Martin de Porres’ Day” because then one would have to calculate how many s’s to put in and just where the apostrophe ought to go), the patron saint of hairdressers and barbers. In a merrier world all barbers and hairdressers would yearly on The Glorious Third parade in the uniforms of their guilds, scissors raised aloft by an honor guard, and singing hymns to God, hymns that also mention hair.

The protomartyr, Saint Stephen, is the patron saint of Hungary, and yet no television specials feature Magyar dancers clogging (or whatever it is that Magyar dancers do) to that jolly old Budapestian song, “Attila the Hun / He Was Really Lots of Fun.” No Magyar-American senators rise unsteadily to a point of order in Congress to declare “Everyone’s Magyar on Saint Stephen’s Day!”

Saint Swithin’s Day (July 15) was a biggie before the Normans came. Robin Hood and his Merry Men often validated a statement with “by Saint Swithin,” as in “Let’s pop over to the Blue Boar Inn for a cold brew, by Saint Swithin.” And yet do pubs feature happy hour on St. Swithin’s Day? Alas, no.

Anyone seeing a flag with the Cross of Saint George almost surely thinks of soccer hooligans and British National Party thugs, not of the patron saint of England, Portugal, and Greece. There are no ditties about “Th’ Wearin’ o’ th’ Red” on April 23rd.

On the first of April most folks will play practical jokes and never spare a thought for Saint Charles I, the last Austrian emperor and one of the noblest men of the 20th century.

In the hospital named for Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen, hundreds of folks pass by a beautiful if fanciful image of her and the Wartburg every day. The ill rightly ask their friends to pray for them, but do they ask Saint Elizabeth to pray for them too? Her day is November 17th. It passes unremarked.

And perhaps that blithe indifference to most saints is better than the shabby treatment given Saint Patrick of Ireland (tho’ he was born in Britain and then enslaved by the Irish). Guided by an angel, Patrick fled his captors after many years in bondage and escaped to Gaul (France) where he went to school and was ordained a priest. Patrick then returned to Ireland to serve as a missionary among the people who had worked him in captivity. That Patrick actually forgave them and then did something for others instead of hanging out for the rest of his life in Britain or Gaul and crying into his beer about his ill-treatment is the surest proof that he was not Irish.

Saint Patrick did not serve humanity so that they might pour green dye into their beverages, wear made-in-China leprechaun badges, and get all teary-eyed about how Celtic they are. The local telly news will feature unsteady folks in the traditional Ye Old Green Tees lifting their glasses and yelling “Whoo! Whoo!” or something equally Ye Olde Celtic at the local Ye Old Irish Blarney Pub and Grille or something, but will have nothing to say of “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate” (that’s a traditional prayer), or of Saint Palladius, Saint Brendan, or Saint Brigid.

Perhaps on Saint Patrick’s Day the other saints at the foot of the Throne gather around him and pat him on the shoulder and comfort him with “We know you tried your best, Paddy,” or perhaps “Maybe next year they’ll get it, eh?”

-30-

Mack Hall’s A Liturgy for the Emperor is available in hardback for $22.99 from Lulu.com and Amazon com. Searching for the Summer Country is available in paperback for $11.88 from Lulu.com. Both are collections of poetry in what is known as neo-formalism, that is, they scan and / or rhyme. No vague, fuzzy, 1968-ish, stream-of-consciousness stuff from Mack!

A LITURGY FOR THE EMPEROR -- now available on Amazon.com

I am pleased to announce that my appropriately slender, rather expensive, and quite excellent book of poetry, A Liturgy for the Emperor, is now available from Amazon.com. If you have read it, do post a review on Amazon. If you haven't read it, your purchase of it will indulge both my ego and my bank account! There are many small pieces, including sonnets, and the longish eponymous poem, "A Liturgy for the Emperor," is in honor of Byzantium.