Dag Hammarskjold Negotiates with Himself and with God - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Dag Hammarskjold Negotiates with Himself and with God

 

Cf. Auden’s introduction to Vagmarken

 

 

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny

but what we put into it is ours.

 

Vagmarken (Markings), p. 55 in the 1965 Knopf edition

 

 

When you were a little child

If you attend a school named for Dag Hammarskjold

How long did it take you to learn to spell his name?

 

And you are now an adult

And blessed with Hammarskjold’s Vagmarken

How long did it take you to joy in his transcendent good?

He was Hollerin' Jesus on Nowhere Street - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

He was Hollerin’ Jesus on Nowhere Street

 

The madman shouted in the market place. No one stopped to answer him.

Thus it was confirmed that his thesis was incontrovertible.

 

-Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, 12.22.57

 

He was hollerin’ Jesus on Nowhere Street

At the Corner of Life and Death, ‘way gone

Where there was a grocery store when we was kids

Next to a soda fountain with pinball machines

 

He was hollerin’ – sinners can’t hear, I guess

And beatin’ on his Bible and dancin’ about

Like a man with a devil in his soul

And that ol’ devil was wearin’ him down

 

He was hollerin’ among the ruins, a shame

When he looked at me

                                and hollered my name