Corporal Karamazov Flies Home from the War - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Logosophiamag.com

Hellopoetry.com

Fellowshipandfairydust.com

 

Corporal Karamazov Flies Home from the War

 

“Which war?”

 

“Your war – there’s always a war.”

 

Every young reader sees Alyosha in himself

A sensitive mystic, misunderstood by most

Questing for an answer to a question unasked

Politely shown the door by Father Zosima

 

As Old Karamazov? Impossible

53 is an age of antiquity

As Dimitri, Ivan, and Smerdyakov?

They are unable to sort out themselves

 

Lost in thought in a contract airline seat:

 

A 22-year-old just two days off the line

A patriarchal colonialist ideologue

If I Win the Lottery - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

If I Win the Lottery

 

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

 

-Fr. Zosima in Book II, Chapter 2 of The Brothers Karamazov

 

If I win the lottery, which is unlikely

Because I never buy a ticket, you know

I’m going to have cases of the Modern Library edition

Of The Brothers Karamazov shipped to me.

 

For the rest of my life I will give copies

To everyone I meet: men in red plastic caps

Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, vegetarians

A lonely soul waiting at the bus stop

 

Dostoyevsky for everyone

If I win the lottery

On Divine Mercy Sunday - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

On Divine Mercy Sunday

 

Above all, don’t lie to yourself.

 

-Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov

 

On Palm Sunday a shortage of palms

On Divine Mercy a shortage of mercy

An onion, a candle, a moment, a prayer -

We’d better give something of ourselves away

A Russian Sunflower (a Russia series, 63) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Russian Sunflower

Deep-rooted in the earth, old Zossima
Turns daily to the sun, our star in the east,
And of his kindness blesses all of us
Who pilgrimage to holy Russia where
He tells us, sure, what we already know:
Fall to the earth; from there look up and see
That like a sunflower, one can turn to Heaven

A Novitiate in the World (a Russia series, 60) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Novitiate in the World

“…you will go forth from these walls,

but will live like a monk in the world.”

-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov

Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

Dimitri in America (a Russia series, 41) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dimitri in America

Did Mitya escape to America?
He might have changed his name to Bob or Al
Married Myrtle in the Methodist Church -
Myrtle, nee’ Agrafena Alexandrovna –

And worked the candy counter at Woolworth’s
Riding the trolley downtown every day
While saving up for a new Model T
In obedience to his New World staretz

Horatio Alger hissing behind a tree:
Was Mitya sentenced to America?

News from Russia (a Russia series, 36) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

News from Russia

The Brothers Karamazov, Book II

There was little news from Russia today
At Optina the midday liturgy
Was over around eleven or so
The faithful crossing themselves as they left

Mostly poor folk, walking to their homes for lunch
And then back to work. They hardly noticed
A party of their betters strolling about
Reading tombstones, giggling about the quaint monks

Waiting to see a reed swaying in the wind
There was little news from Russia today

A Lost Copy of The Brothers Karamazov (a Russia series, 34) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Lost Copy of

The Brothers Karamazov

Come, little book, companion of lost youth
Well met at Tien Sha in the long ago
A comrade through the days of gasping heat
A comrade through the nights of flare-lit death

And then

A comrade through life’s lingering after-years
That often seemed only a falling away
From that not time which was lost in not time
The fallenness of man and men and time

O little book that steadies the universe
Where are you now – not lost out of not time?




At a Pacific Stars & Stripes book stall in Viet-Nam I bought a Modern Library edition of The Brothers Karamazov which I stowed away with my gear and on which I read only a little; I was much more into Tolkien. In the event, more than a year later (I was in-country 18 months) I opened that book aboard a Pan American 707, but was so grateful to be alive and so sick that I never read more than a page or so. I didn’t finish the book until years later, and havere-read it several times since.

Somehow I have lost it, and although my wonderful daughter gave me a replacement (in larger print), I so miss that companion of the long-ago.

A Russian Series, 9: The Fifth Karamazov - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Fifth Karamazov

When young we identify with Alyosha
His optimism and his innocence
His fragile, flowering Orthodox 1 faith
A happy, almost-holy fool for Christ

When older, the sensual Dimitri,
With irresponsible lusts and desires
Grasping for the rewards of the moment
Now, ever now, wanting everything now

Then older still, as intellectual Ivan
Sneeringly aloft, above all faith and flesh
A constructor of systems and ideas
From the back pages of French magazines

Though never do we identify with
Nest-fouling, leering, lurking Smerdyakov
Our secret fear, unspoken fear, death-fear:
That he might be who we untruly are

But hear, O hear, the holy bells of Optina 2
Those Russian messengers 3 singing to us
Inviting us to meet Alyosha again
At Father Zosima’s poor 4 hermitage


1 Russian Orthodox
2 The name of the real monastery upon which Dostoyevsky modeled his fictional one
3 The Brothers Karamazov was first published as a serial in The Russian Messenger
4 Poor only by secular standards

The Fifth Karamazov - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Fifth Karamazov

When young we identify with Alyosha
His optimism and his innocence
His fragile, flowering Orthodox1 faith
A happy, almost-holy fool for Christ

When older, the sensual Dimitri,
With irresponsible lusts and desires
Grasping for the rewards of the moment
Now, ever now, wanting everything now

Then older still, as intellectual Ivan
Sneeringly aloft, above all faith and flesh
A constructor of systems and ideas
From the back pages of French magazines

Though never do we identify with
Nest-fouling, leering, lurking Smerdyakov
Our secret fear, unspoken fear, death-fear:
That he might be who we untruly are

But hear, O hear, the holy bells of Optina2
Those Russian messengers3 singing to us
Inviting us to meet Alyosha again
At Father Zosima’s poor4 hermitage


1Russian Orthodox
2The name of the real monastery upon which Dostoyevsky modeled his fictional one
3The Brothers Karamazov was first published as a serial in The Russian Messenger
4Poor only by earthly standards

A Novitiate in the World - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Novitiate in the World

“…you will go forth from these walls,
but will live like a monk in the world.”

-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov

Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

Contra Ivan Karamazov

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A little exposition: In The Brothers Karamazov Ivan is an agnostic who cannot reconcile faith and his Euclidian mind. My thesis (last line) is that everyone and everything, understood by us or not, is in unity with God.

Still, about those fire ants…

Contra Ivan Karamazov

Though some maintain that parallels don’t meet
And three-point-something is the sum of pi
And whether X is found; no one knows why
(Was it lost, perhaps wandering in the street?)
Curious matters all Euclidian
Even for the bold mathematician
Are as obdurate as obsidian
Each an illogical proposition
To the rationalist impossible, and yet -
Parallel lines are at the Altar met

Old Karamazov

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Old Karamazov

Young Karamazov – once upon a time
Strolled dreaming through the happy hopes of youth
And surely wondered about spring and love
Wrote clumsy verse, perhaps, for a pretty girl
Then fell unfortunately into fashion:
The acquisition of proud vanities
Through the disposition of dreams and souls
Until he was only an old man who
Sat brooding through the bitter schemes of age
Old Karamazov – lost upon a time