Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-olds - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

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

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

 

“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

 

-Holmes’ first words to Watson in

A Study in Scarlet, 1887

 

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush

Falling upon the lowlands in despair

Of any reality beyond death

In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

 

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away

In the wreckage of long-fallen empires

Their detritus trod upon by tired men

Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

 

And yet the empire masters will return

And leave fresh offerings of more young men:

A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,

A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

 

 

From The Road to Magdalena, Lawrence Hall, 2012, available via amazon.com

 

“Afghanistan, graveyard of empires” is a common saying whose source is unknown.

 

Ever England - a poem for Battle of Britain Day

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

Ever England

Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb
Far up into the English summer sky
At the lingering end of a golden time
As wild young lads and aging empires die

The Hood and Rodney still the Channel guard
Against the strident Men of Destiny
Then shellfire falls; the helm is over hard
But the brave old ships keep the Narrow Sea

Dear Grandpa and the boys sport thin tin hats
In Sunday afternoon’s invasion drill
Gram says he’s too damned old for all of that
But she too smells the smoke of Abbeville

Faith does not pass with ephemeral time:
Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climb



Previously published in longbowsandrosarybeads.blogspot.com and The Road to Magdalena (amazon.com)

Bad Morning, Viet-Nam - poem

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

Bad Morning, Viet-Nam

No music calls a teenager to war;
There is no American Bandstand of death,
No bugles sound a glorious John Wayne charge
For corpses floating down the Vam Co Tay

No rockin’ sounds for all the bodies bagged
No “Gerry Owen” to accompany
Obscene screams in the hot, rain-rotting night.
Bullets do not whiz. Mortars do not crump.

There is no rattle of musketry.
The racket and the horror are concussive.
Men – boys, really – do not choose to die,
“Willingly sacrifice their lives,” that lie

They just writhe in blood, on a gunboat deck
Painted to Navy specifications.


from The Road to Magdalena, 2012

The Road to Magdalena, New Mexico - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Road to Magdalena, New Mexico

The wind is cold, a Colorado cold,
Blowing the summer back to Mexico
From whence it came; it sat upon this land
For dreary months of heavy, lifeless heat.
But now the desert dawn is blue; the stars
Make one last show before withdrawing to
The Caves of Night beyond the timberline,
Where no man walks, for fear of ancient gods.

This desert dawn is blue with promises;
The road to Magdalena creeps beneath
The ridges where the Watchers of the night
Seem now content to still their thunderstorms,
And grant a grateful pilgrim sunlit hours.
There will be coffee in Magdalena,
And not much else. The cattle drives have ceased,
And the railroad is gone; the school is closed,
As are the saloons.  But there should be coffee.

The Plains of San Agustin

Lawrence Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
From The Road to Magdalena, 2012

The Plains of San Agustin

“And lean upon a peasant’s staff”

-Wordsworth

But rather lean upon a pilgrim’s staff,

And trudge the road to Magdalena, yes,
With Rosary in hand, wearing old boots
From some lost war, some long-lost time ago;
A canvas vade mecum for his gear,
A worn-out boonie hat against the sun,
The high-plains sun against the stars, upon
The track to Magdalena in the fall,
To listen to the spirits converse with clouds
Upon the Plains of San Agustin where
A Very Large Array of idols listens for
A voice from space, from far beyond the skies;
For there, if anywhere, He can be heard,
But not from painted idols, no, but from
The haunted earth, and from the stars and back
Again.  And then – and then shuffle away,
Stick tapping on the rocks, boots treading dust;
For if some stranger finds that stick, those boots
Abandoned in the brush some desert noon
And bones upon the sands like scattered words,
He’ll know a pilgrim made a happy end.

From 2012: Super-Servile Sunday

Lawrence Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
From The Road to Magdalena
Available from amazon.com as
a Kindle and as fragments of
dead tree

Super-Servile Sunday

O sink not down to that corrosive couch,

Docile before the Orwellian screen
That regulates the lives of the servile,
Dictating dress and drink, demeanor, dreams;
Declare your independence from the sludge
Of vague obedientiaries who drowse
Away their empty lives in submission
To harsh, diagonal inches of rule,
Poor weaklings chanting tainted tribal songs
In chorus hamsterable, huddled, heaped,
While costumed in their masters’ liveries,
And feeling little while thinking even less,
The very model of the State’s non-men,
Predictable and dull, submissive ghosts
Crowded, herded in cosmic cattle chutes,
Reflected in dim, noisy nothingness.

But you, O you, be not of them, but be

A wanderer in the moonlight, one known
To God and to His holy solitude.

 

The Road to Magdalena

 

 

My latest book, The Road to Magdalena, is available from Amazon.com at .99 for the Kindle edition and $6.95 for the paperback. Sample pages are featured on the site:

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Magdalena-Lawrence-Mack-Hall/dp/1480245151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356744853&sr=8-1&keywords=the+road+to+magdalena