Children in Clear Plastic Cages - poem

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

Children in Clear Plastic Cages

“I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3 percent, in terms of total mortality.”

-Dr. Mehmet Oz

A child
Is not a herd immunity parameter
Nor is she a working hypothesis
A flatten-the-curve probability
Or a distribution of antibodies

A child
Is not an appetizing opportunity
Nor is she a 2 to 3% tradeoff
A deceived Darwinian’s variable
Or the it in “It is what it is”

A child
Is the small, still voice of God calling to us


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dr-oz-slammed-for-suggesting-it-may-only-cost-us-2-to-3-of-american-lives-to-reopen-schools-2020-04-16

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/it-what-it-trump-interview-covid-19-death-toll-u-n1235734

1 Kings 19

Poetry - Ideas Dressed up with Some Place to Go - a poem about poems, but not a poem about poems about poems, or maybe it is...

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Poetry – Ideas Dressed up with Some Place to Go

A poem need not be so overdressed
That it embarrasses free-verse poseurs
Awash in self-absorbed, self-pitying tears
The sound of one first-person pronoun clapping

But still they should be instructed

That a poem is not about the poet
It is about the reader who has turned
His attention and the writer’s pages
To the existential questions of life

And so is properly dressed for its work

Poetry and Hamburgers - poem

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

Poetry and Hamburgers

Only in Russia is poetry respected –

it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else

where poetry is so common a motive for murder?

-attributed to Osip Mandelstam

Only in America is a hamburger respected -
It gets people killed. Is there anywhere else
Where not making a ‘burger fast enough
Is so common a motive for murder?


https://www.businessinsider.com/fast-food-industry-attempts-to-address-shootings-threat-training-2019-8?op=1

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/04/fast-food-crime-why-is-there-so-much-violent-crime-at-fast-food-restaurants.html

When We Arrive in Saint Petersburg - poem

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

When We Arrive in Saint Petersburg

When the Paris plane lands at Pulkovo
We will be groggy from traveling through time
But we must drop our bags at the Nevsky 88
And report to the Emperor on Senate Square

Two coffees from a kiosk, and a bench
We’ll probably buy a postcard or two
And watch passing lovers on that summer day
And make no plans beyond that moment

The Horseman in the sun will be enough
For we will have arrived in Saint Petersburg

A Reflection on Choices Made - poem

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

A Reflection on Choices Made

“…they have failed to tell the truth, preferring a safe distance”

-Yevtushenko

Maybe I disappoint, but now I prefer
That safe distance Yevtushenko condemned
Because in media res all is chaos
The immediacy of emotion and pain

The best of intentions, sodden with blood
Conflicting condemnations stinging with pain
Choosing to be involved, and then condemned
The sneers and scorn of an ungrateful nation

Only in reflection, with confusion crossed
Does a man learn whether he won or lost

Just Drop the Deck - a poem about lawnmower repairs (caution - strong asterisk usage)

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

Just Drop the Deck

When the lawnmower goes CLUNK – and it often
     does –
I burrow into the InterGossip to find
One of those fixit videos by some fellow
Named Darryl or Wayne or Red or Mitch who
     spends
The first five minutes on exposition:

“Like, you know, this is my garage, like, you know, and this is my mower, and there’s the kids’ bicycles, you know, and I was mowing the yard, you know, you can see where I stopped (shaky video shift), ha ha, when the machine went CLUNK, you know, and, well, here it is, you know, as you can see it’s a classic Snarkwell-Guppy, like, you know, and they sure don’t build ‘em like this anymore, like, you know, so today I’m going to show you how to diagnose the CLUNK, like, you know, so first you take your wire cutters, you know, because they cut wires, you know, and you cut all these wires here, you know, like and you take your tester, you know, and, like, oh, I need to change the 9-volt battery, like, you know, okay, so we know the CLUNK is from the PTO, so now you just drop the
     deck…”

Why do ALL lawnmower repairs begin
With “…just drop the deck?” Yeah, an
     hour of heat
And sweat and barking your knuckles
With three sizes of wrenches and searching
For that last little nut hidden in some
Inaccessible place and then the
Heavy-*** deck falls on your hand and you
Yell the sort of thing that got your mouth washed
     out
With soap by Mom when you were little

But I no longer drop the ***-**** deck
I take that ***-****ed mower to the shop

My mower is about two inches too wide
For the pickup truck, so I borrow my brother
And a trailer and we heave that ***-**-*-*****
Mower onto it and haul it away

Uh, oh…is that tire flat…? ***-**-*-*****!

Then we take the mower to the good ol’ shop
That has changed hands ‘cause Old Bubba retired,
And they promise the mower in twelve days
And they don’t call and they don’t answer the
     ‘phone
And when you finally go in to check on it
The girls their sweet time looking up
From their take-out burgers and fries and shakes,
And then look at you as if you have interrupted
Their leisurely day of eating, snickering
And making personal ‘phone calls. Then one goes
To the back while the other keeps giggling
And spraying food on her ‘phone,
And the other one returns to say
They lost a mechanic and they’re sorry
They’ll get right on it tomorrow, yessir,
Which means another two weeks at the least

I got the mower home yesterday
And after a half-hour it laid down and died

Thus endeth the lesson

A Spring Harvest, Geoffrey Bache Smith - a Review

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Spring Harvest, Geoffrey Bache Smith – a Review

I bought my copy of Geoffrey Bache Smith’s A Spring Harvest from That Company via the InterGossip, and caution those wishing to read Smith’s poems to verify the quality of what they are buying.

There is a contemporary problem with all sorts of people cobbling together all sorts of drivel and finding a way of tacking the names of C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien to these mashups in order to make a sale.

Shameful borrowers lacking any creativity of their own, for instance, often write pastiche letters from Screwtape, an unfortunate practice even with children, who at least can plead youthful ignorance, but adults, who should demonstrate a sense of ethics, have gotten away with looting Lewis’ works for profit.

The recent film biography of Tolkien is universally condemned, and rightly so. One hopes the fine young actors’ careers aren’t stalled, and that the producers’ careers are.

A more recent misfortune is a crudely glued-together pamphlet of the poems of Geoffrey Bache Smith, a friend and schoolmate of Tolkien’s who was killed in France in 1916.

After the war, as a tribute to his boyhood friend and as a kindness to his grieving mother, Tolkien edited some of Smith’s poems into a little book, A Spring Harvest, and had them printed.

Undoubtedly the original edition was thoughtfully set out by the publishers.

This 2020 printing is a mess. The only identifying information is inside the back cover, probably because the perpetrators do not wish to be known:

Made in the USA
Coppell, TX
07 July 2020

Presumably Smith’s poems are out of copyright; even so, this shabby “Coppell, TX” treatment should never have happened: the typeface is inappropriate, the layout is crude, and the cover is a greasy, fingerprint-y sheet of cardboard. The copy of a copy of a copy of a photograph shows us that in the anonymous editor’s mind Lieutenant Smith should be depicted in an unhappy shade of aqua.

And now to the poems: Smith was only 22 when he died of his wounds, and so his work can fairly be regarded as juvenilia, with some good exceptions. He was the product of the middle class and a good education (not simply staring into a screen and pushing buttons), and was an inheritor of Romantic and Victorian usages and traditions. His formal diction can seem stilted, but such was common in the days of parlour poetry. Smith was just out of boyhood, and so was learning his way through language and poetry. His usage and content is formed on Celtic mythology, King Arthur, and knights and their ladies fair, and a sense of loyalty to nation, king, and empire that seems wholly alien now: “Sonnet to the British Navy,” for instance, is painful to read.

Smith’s structure, though, is excellent. “Sonnet to the British Navy” is certainly derivative in wording and style, but the artistic discipline of his precise Shakespearean sonnet form is much to be praised. In a time when most poetry is nothing more than insipid, undisciplined, self-obsessed, me-me-me-poor-me free verse, Smith’s command of meter and rhyme is to be praised.

One of the most delightful poems in the pamphlet is “Pure Virginia,” a tribute to American tobacco. This is a well-crafted Petrarchan sonnet in which Smith forgets to be too formal and lets himself have a little fun.

The most touching poem is “Domum Redi Poeta” (the poet returns home). The Latin is not an affectation; like all carefully brought up children until fairly recently, Smith, Lewis, and Tolkien were quite at home in the language of ancient Rome, even in making jokes and writing poetry.

This little two-stanza piece in rhyming iambic tetrameter expresses the poet’s desire to return to the innocent joys of his boyhood home, and knowing as we do that he didn’t, the pathos is very real.

A Spring Harvest shows us the unfulfilled promise of a life ended young in yet another futile war. Geoffrey Bache Smith died well, though, and in his brief life accomplished more than taking selfies and watching television.

For those who are fond of the Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, and their friends), A Spring Harvest will be a worthy edition to their libraries - in another edition.

-30-

Moonlight and the Transfiguration - poem

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

Moonlight and the Transfiguration

Up before dawn; the dogs would have it so
Demanding to be taken for their first patrol
Snuffling and barking mysteries along the ground
While we consider the mysteries of the stars

The moon is full, and Venus anticipates the dawn
Dogs know nothing of the Transfiguration
And I don’t really understand it myself
And that’s okay

Up before dawn, for God will have us so
Savoring the beautiful mysteries given us

But He Had a Pre-Existing Condition - poem

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

But He Had a Pre-Existing Condition

Foul smoke, yellow and sour from rubbish fires
Spasms like a snake with a broken back
Twisting among our crumbling Qumran caves
Wherein our scrollies might someday be found

Rumors as well as smoke patrol our roads
Each contradicting the other with absolutes
The eternal verities of this hour
Which must be obeyed until they must not

The death of your friend is irrelevant:
He had a pre-existing condition

It is what it is

The Divine Office at Night - poem

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

The Divine Office at Night 1

Even if those happy spheres are sentient beings
We need not pray for the abbess moon and her
     stars
For they never rebelled in the gardens of space
For there they found space enough, beyond time

Perhaps they wonder if we are sentient beings
And much in need of their sung prayers instead
We, with our ancient hatreds and endless wars
As soon as formed disobedient to God

We need not pray for the abbess moon and her
     stars
But be most grateful if they pray for us


1 Cf. The Rule of Saint Benedict

New Along Beer Can Road & County Dump Extension - MePhone Photograph

Civic Holiday (Canada) - poem

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

Civic Holiday (Canada)

With Jesus and some children and a sheep
The funeral home Catholic calendar says
That today is “Civic Holiday (Canada)”
I don’t know what that is, this August day

Do children in Nunavit make Civic floats?
Are there midnight Civic fireworks in Labrador
Or Civic picnics in British Columbia
Or Civic costume parties in Manitoba?

I still don’t know, but God bless Canada
Whose goodness needs no excuse for a party

Moon and Venus - MePhone Photograph

Loaves and Wishes - poem (sort of)

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

Loaves and Wishes

Jesus told the crowd to sit down on the ground.
Then he took the seven loaves and the fishes,
and when he had given thanks, he broke them
and gave them to the disciples, and they
in turn to the people.

-St. Matthew

“Is there a vegan option?”
“Are these fish from renewable stocks?”
“Is this bread gluten free?”
“Is this all you’ve got – bread and fish?”
“Are your bread and fish locally sourced?”
“I have allergies, you know.”
“Could I see the menu?”
“I’d like my bread thinly sliced.”
“No dessert?”
“Yeah, I know who’s paying for this – the workin’ man. You can’t fool me.”
“I want a hamburger!”
“I want fried chicken!”
“Where’s your health certificate?”
“Waiter, I was here before these other people!”
“The presentation is deplorable. Don’t expect a tip, okay?”
“Sitting on the ground with The People! Oh, how quaint and colorful and ethnic! I feel almost like a good comrade!"
"Will they do some of their funny little folk dances later? Should we toss coins at them?”
“Where’s the men’s room?”
“Is there a wine list?”
“I’ll start with a salad.”
“Not the milieu I would have chosen for a date night, of course, but it’s not bad.”
“I’ll expect my clergy discount.”
“No flatware? Napkins?”
“Could I have a doggie bag, please?”
“Tell me about your locally crafted beers.”
“I don’t see the nutritional information.”
“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong, waitress; I ordered the bread and fish and my friend ordered the fish and bread.”
“Is there a children’s menu?”
“If I get sick from this unrefrigerated food you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
“Is there a plug-in for my ‘phone?”
“Please seat my party with a view of a nicer rock than this.”
“But don’t seat us next to any Romans.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Pharisees.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Sadducees.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Cyrenians.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Egyptians.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Ethiopians.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Samaritans.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Judaeans.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Galileans.”
“Oh – the Host is a Galilean? Really?”
“Don’t seat us next to any Arabians.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Hellenes.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Canaanites.”
“Don’t seat us next to any Edomites.”
“What’s an Edomite?”
“Hey, my brother-in-law’s an Edomite! Ya wanna make something of it? Just open yer mouth one more time about Edomites!”
“This is nice. We should come here more often.”

Amen.

He was Reading a Kristin Hannah Novel - poem

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

He was Reading a Kristin Hannah Novel

My pharmacist died today. The CV.
Two weeks ago we were laughing about books
About each other, our reading habits
My Yevtushenko, his Kristin Hannah

I mocked his chick-lit; he mocked my Russians
He said I would really like Winter Garden
Because in it I could visit Saint Petersburg
Which is every reader’s dream

A pharmacist and friend - he died today
I must go and find Winter Garden

Where are the Back-to-School Ads? - poem

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

Where are the Back-to-School Ads?

The tumult in the heart

Keeps asking questions

-Elizabeth Bishop, “Four Poems: I / Conversation”

Where are the summer’s-end back-to-school ads?
No dancing pencils or princess backpacks
No brand-new notebooks with bright plastic tabs
No staplers, glue, file folders, paper, or pens

No laughing children in jeans and tops and tees
No ‘way-cool sneaks or socks or flippy skirts
No fashion purses, no funny new hats
No Disney images of hallway fun

There is no merriment this new school year
Only chemicals and distancing
                                                                and fear

Dostoyevsky's House of the Living - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Dostoyevsky’s House of the Living

“I was in prison…and you came to see me.”

-Saint Matthew 25: 34-26

Dostoyevsky is possibly the best writer of narratives of redemption, probably because of his time in prison. I first read The House of the Dead along with other of his novels some years ago. Recently I was "guilted" by Fr. Ron (I did not want to go) into volunteering at prison with con, which in the event has proven to be one of the few experiences in my life in which I felt - one cannot know, of course - that I was doing exactly what God expected of me. This volunteer work with the chaplain, a sturdy Baptist, and with wise and experienced volunteers and mentors, especially Al and George, led me to re-read Dostoyevsky’s semi-autobiographical prison novel.

As a young man Dostoyevsky was drawn into the Petrashevsky Circle in Saint Petersburg, which may or may not have planned the violent overthrow of the government. The group was arrested in1849, held in the Peter and Paul fortress in Saint Petersburg, tried, and sentenced to death. The Czar’s pardon of the conspirators even as they faced a firing party is well known.

Dostoyevsky spent four years in a Siberian prison camp and then a term as a soldier until he was permitted to return to Saint Petersburg in 1859.

The parallels in the unit I visit and Dostoyevsky's prison are remarkable, even to the general layout of the prison and to the diverse characters and nationalities of the images. In the local prison, though, prisoners are respected and treated with dignity in preparation for their return to freedom. Successful completion of anger management and other counseling programs are mandatory for release.

But please note than I know almost nothing about penology or psychology, and my two hours each week visiting the lads are as nothing. I am neither a Pollyanna nor a Darwinian, but only a sympathetic if naïve observer.

First, about that famous cable tv: there are in fact two of them, rather small, high up on a wall in the common area, and remotely controlled by the duty officer. No prisoner has much time for watching tv, though, for everyone has a work detail. A man might be dozing on his bunk in the early evening, but that’s because his work assignment begins in the kitchen at 0300 and he must also attend classes. There are no private rooms; all live in dorms that very much resemble my recruit training barracks in the long-ago.

Prisons do not exist so that visitors like me can write sappy articles about “What I learned in prison” because prison is about the prisoner, about helping him learn about himself and his place in civilization. Dostoyevsky would say that learning is a part of a man’s redemption, on either side of the shiny wire.

But I have learned this: the difference between a man behind the wire and a man outside the wire is often only that one man is behind the wire and the other is outside the wire.

Okay, that’s a bit precious, but a reality is that there are far more criminals on the outside than on the inside.

Another reality in the unit I visit is the diversity of individuals with regard to faith traditions, race, intellect, accomplishments, education, and skills. I have met once-wealthy businessmen who admitted that their success in life led them to a feeling of arrogance and immunity. I have met twenty-somethings who did stupid stuff because popular culture and their local subcultures led them to existential despair. The CPA is in a bunk next to the low-level drug dealer. Someone conversant in seven languages and who holds a master’s degree is bunked next to the kid who helped himself to someone else’s car on a dare.

C. S. Lewis wrote in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, that in the army, “Every few days one seemed to meet a scholar, an original, a poet, a cheery buffoon, or at the least a man of good will.” And so it is in prison as it is in the army or on the job.

My prison is a transit unit, with folks coming and going constantly, either on their way to a long-term sentence at one of the large units, serving a short sentence here, or, happily, cycling through the various programs and consultations in preparation for release. I regret that I seldom get to know anyone very well, but in the context of the mission that’s probably for the best.

Unfortunately, all prison visits in my state are now forbidden during the coronavirus time. I do miss the guys, and hope I have been of some small service in their rehabilitation. I pray for them daily, and hope to be permitted to resume working with them soon.


http://www.encspb.ru/object/2804022508;jsessionid=777C33E31108B724645FFEDA4512B4CF?lc=en

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/02/24/dostoyevskys-unabomber

-30-

God Behind the Mask - poem

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

God Behind the Mask

Perceiving God in someone else’s smile
Is awkward even in the best of times
But now we only see a dear friend’s eyes

Although

In fresh new ways - surprises every day

We notice masks because we failed to see
The givenness of daily saints obscured
Only by easy familiarity
Inattention on the road to Emmaus

Perceiving God in someone else’s eyes –
Maybe it’s easier now

Catnap - MePhone Photograph

Midway Through THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE - poem

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

Midway Through
The Oxford Book of Christian Verse

O, oh, ah, ah me!

Wand’ring, ling’ring, confin’d, lock’d, undiscover’d
Own’d, enthron’d, flow’ring, and perplex’d
Tho’, fetter’d, hallow’d, spread’st, leav’st,
    vouchsaf’st, ‘midst
Th’eternal, th’unwearied, t’express, pass’d

Slipp’ry, congeal’d, ‘twere, ev’ry, hurl’d, triumph’d
‘Twas, sinn’d, cleans’d, ‘bove, astonish’d, t’expire,
     bid’st, o’er
Scatter’d, hugg’d, bow’d, summ’d, e’er, fill’d,
     disappear’d
Bow’r, flourish’d, heav’n, anger’d, dissol’vd,
     wither’d, stain’d

Hark!

O antic scriv’ner, huddled in your cowl
Coulds’t I purchase a gross or two of vow’l?

Toadstools After a Summer Rain - MePhone Photograph

The Potter's Wheel - Whimsy with a Spin on Pathos

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

The Potter’s Wheel

Is one of three upon his pickup truck,
Which in truth never picks up anything
Because the pottery thing did not work out
And so his cousin found him a county job

Sometimes he wanders through the garden shop
And finds the earthen art that once was his:

Hecho en Mexico
Fabrique au Chine
Duoc san xuat lai viet nam
Buatan Indonesia

He sighs in remembrance, and turns away -
And did I mention that his name is Clay?

Where in (Newark, New Jersey) is the "“Revert to Legacy Blogger” option to be found?

Change is not always good; this new interface is the sort of change evidenced in decaying road kill.

A World Lit Only by Double-A Batteries - poem

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

A World Lit Only by Double-A Batteries 1

A fashionable square plastic tick-tock clock
A pocket flashlight, a little radio
Hurricane lanterns positioned against the storms
The innards of bleep-bleeping smoke alarms

A police-scanner, toys, remote controls
Clever little sphygmomanometers
Bedtime book lights, magnifying glasses
Bubba-cap headlamps, tiny little fans

How many uses! Let us count the ways 2 -
Against the darkness flinging our double-A’s


1 Cf. A World Lit Only by Fire, William Manchester

2 Cf. Sonnet 43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book Shops Offer Us Civilizations - poem

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

Book Shops Offer Us Civilizations

Book shops offer us civilizations
Democracies of the living and the dead -
Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Langston Hughes,
     and you
Over cups of coffee wrangle meter and rhyme

Book shops offer us civilizations

James Weldon Johnson, Keats, and Claude McKay
Are questioning Auden along Aisle 3
Yevtushenko scoffs at bureaucracy
Ahkmatova Stray Dogs the lot of us

Book shops offer us civilizations

And only an unhappy man who has lost his way
Obsesses on the bookseller’s DNA

Old Pete, a Mighty Hunter Before the Lord - poem

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

Old Pete, a Mighty Hunter Before the Lord

A cigar box of childhood photographs
And there he is, that mighty courser – Old Pete
Thunder-Tail-Thumper, pal of barefoot boys
Chaser of rabbits and tasty table scraps

Always up for a ramble to the pond
In the day-dreamy midsummer heat
Where I pole-fished for perch, and good old Pete
Drowsed in the shade, and looked at me with love

I buried him under his favorite oak
Where, with eternity, he waits for me

A Celebration of Water-Hose Clamps - poem

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

A Celebration of Water-Hose Clamps

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

― Cicero 1

Poets have been mysteriously silent 2
On the subject of water-hose clamps
Small cylinders or rings, threaded for compression
In mending or nozzling a garden hose

Thus if you have a clamp, you have a hose
In need of mending, and if you have a hose
You have a garden in need of watering
And if you have a garden, you are much blest

And in your garden you can drowse over a book
While meditating upon water-hose clamps


1 http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusLatinTexts&getid=1&query=Cic.%20Fam.%209.4

2 https://www.quora.com/What-did-G-K-Chesterton-mean-by-poets-have-been-mysteriously-silent-on-the-subject-of-cheese?share=1

When I was on the Faculty at Notre Dame... - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

When I was on the Faculty at Notre Dame…

Tom Morris is a modern American philosopher of such influence that he once persuaded a board or committee of august personages at Notre Dame that I should be on the faculty.

And I was.

For a few weeks one summer.

Along with a dozen or so other recipients of a summer National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship in the long ago.

Be impressed.

The maître d’ / headwaiter / manager of the faculty dining room was definitely not impressed, but that’s a story for another paragraph.

In illo tempore Dr. Morris (“Call me Tom”) was a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, entrusted by President Reagan and William Bennett, then chairman – no human is a chair – of the National Endowment for the Humanities, to divert some of that endowment to a few mere high school teachers. Now Tom writes books, books of such great wisdom and clarity that you and I can understand them, and speaks to groups of the wise and the powerful (and possibly sometimes to the merely silly) all over the world.

And so it came to pass that I filled out forms and wrote essays and was chosen to participate in an NEH Summer Seminar to study philosophy with brilliant and funny Professor Morris at the University of Notre Dame.

A year or so later Tom asked several of us to read a draft of his work in progress, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life.

My contribution is a comma on page 34. I’m very proud of that comma, so if you find that book please do look up my comma. You can then say that you know someone who made a significant contribution to a brilliant contemporary work of philosophy easily understood by all (even by me).

All this babbling is a too-long preface to a marvelous recent book by Tom, The Oasis Within. The book is a series of little lessons and thinking exercises framed in the story of a boy and his uncle on a camel caravan through Egypt in 1934.

The story can be read solely as a story, and it would be both diverting and useful, but the thinking reader will also consider the many questions about the meanings in one’s life and the nature of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In an unhappy time when discourse is pretty much limited to people screaming ill-considered absolutes at each other, we listen to young Walid and his Uncle Ali reflect on the events of each day progress in their journey, and their friends Hamid, Masoon (warrior and cook), Hakeem, Bancom, an unnamed lady of great wisdom, other travelers and business people, and treacherous (Boooo! Hissss!) Faisul.

In the end, Walid learns that he is a royal prince, but that adventure is developed further in the next book in the series, The Golden Palace and The Stone of Giza.

Every event in the story is of course itself and each chapter is centered on daily happenings along the way, but each is also representative of the challenges everyone faces in life and the need for careful observation followed by ethical and rational choices. Each chapter, then, can be considered as a leisurely daily lesson in perceiving, thinking, feeling, and developing logical solutions in pursuit of an ethical purpose.

The Oasis Within is not a religious book, nor is it antithetical to any religious faith, except perhaps to those who believe in The Lizard People and albino monks lurking in secret caves beneath the Pentagon.

A common misapprehension is that philosophy is an alternative to faith, which is simply not so. “Philosophy” is Greek for the love of wisdom, and wisdom is but careful observation and wise application. On pages 123 and 138, for instance, the consideration of a duality at first struck me through my filter of Christianity as sailing close to Manichaeism, and I quibble with the use of the terms “fate” and “destiny” on page 145, but then this book is not a religious text, and, after all, a happy and challenging debate on any topic is an essential of civilization.

When we install a new battery in the lawn mower or a car, there are but two choices about electrical polarity – we connect the cables and battery positive to positive and negative to negative. There is no trinitarian doctrine of the battery, and “positive” and “negative” in the context of a vehicle’s electrical system are not value judgments.

Thus it is with books of philosophy and conversations with Uncle Ali. We listen to each other and we learn from each other. If we scream at each other then nothing worthy is accomplished.

The Oasis Within is available from amazon.com as an inexpensive paperback.

And now, let us harken back to those golden days of yesteryear, when we
One day we chose to exercise a faculty privilege and enjoy lunch at the faculty club. We dressed up (in those Ye Olden Days, nice dresses for most of the women and blazers and ties for most of the men), and with our faculty cards in hand presented ourselves.

The courtesies and kindnesses extended to us by Professor Morris and, indeed, every academic we were privileged to meet at Notre Dame did not extend to the faculty club. The maître d’ / headwaiter / manager regarded us with the icy disdain of Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Agatha finding a caterpillar in her vichyssoise, and only after some persuasion and presentations of proofs of our specialness and a bit of standing our ground and refusing to go away were we hoi polloi (that’s like, you know, Greek, and, like, stuff) (the only Greek I know) grudgingly permitted to enter the dining room. The poor man did not tell us to wipe our feet or refrain from blowing our noses on the linen napkins, but we could tell that he was not anticipating appropriate demeanor from us.

In the event we enjoyed a perfectly nice lunch, lifted a glass in honor of our wise professor, discussed Blaise Pascal’s Pensees, (I had seen a working reproduction of his calculating machine, ca 1642, at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, but no one was impressed), and refrained from putting our feet on the table or throw bread rolls at anyone.

I think Uncle Ali would concur that not putting one’s feet on the table or throwing bread rolls at lunch comes under topic #6 of the Seven Secrets, about developing good character.

The headwaiter would probably agree.

http://www.tomvmorris.com/
http://ami19.org/Pascaline/IndexPascaline-English.html

-30-

What Are We Anti Today? - short poem

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

What Are We Anti Today?

“’Cause we’re the people, and we just keep on a’dragging each other down.”

-as Ma Joad does not say in The Grapes of Wrath

Being against a man because he is
Against another man will not thus lead
A man to be a man for any man

Frog Eggs in the Bees' Pool - MePhone Photograph 22 July 2020

Frogs are marvelous - they devour mosquitoes and other pests, and are biological markers: frogs are susceptible to pollution, so if you have frogs you have a clean environment.

Bees also are marvelous - without their pollination activity we would starve. They need fresh water, but since they can't take off from the water be sure to provide them with debris from which they can launch after they have refreshed themselves.

Silence Gives only Itself - poem

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

Silence Gives only Itself

“What does it betoken, this silence?”

-Cromwell in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons

 

Soft silences are beautiful and rare
Those happy gifts of meditation given
Unify self in wise tranquility
Pondering transcendent reality

Inside the narratives of the pensive mind

Defining through an absence of endeavors
Considerations of eternal verities
Outside the fallenness of space and time

Mankind can never be masters of fate

Reason shows us that Cassius was wrong
About that, and about false fate itself
Doubts sometimes must determinations
     precede

Every occasion for reason is just and fair -

Soft silences are beautiful and rare

Coy Litotes - Haiku

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

We Were Diffidently Addressed

By coy Litotes
Who were not unworthy of
Their reputation

After the Wedding - poem

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

After the Wedding

The night outside was cold; the fire was warm
And so was she, all golden in the light
That gentle light, a glass of wine in hand
Her eyes, her lips sweet tributes to God’s grace

We spoke of love, of what was good and true
And beautiful, of promises freely given
Of trust anointed through those promises
And then she put her glass aside, and whispered:

“I love you so much; you need only ask
Since now for you only will I slip off

                                                                                           my mask”

A Tyburn Tree in Diebus Nostris - poem

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

A Tyburn Tree in Diebus Nostris

This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Everything upright connects to crossing beams
Whose angles cancel every aspiration
In a suspension of time, of thought, of hope

This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Everything horizontal paused in place
Resting upon the uprights locked in theirs
In a suspension of all purposes

This summer seems to be a Tyburn Tree
Where our uncertainties together hang

Your Browser is No Longer Supported - poem

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

Your Browser is No Longer Supported

Thank you for visiting asymmetrical.
Business’n’homesolutions.plop
You are using a heritage legacy
Browser HELP CENTER that worked just fine and
     met
All your home and business needs but which some
Shaven-headed twit in a cartoon tee
Ditched because he had nothing better to do
In Waycool California which may impact
Your reading experience for the best experience
We recommend you access the newer than new
XtreemShockWaveOneFormatToRuleThem
Golly Gosh Browser that we trust you will find
To be user hostile, difficult to load,
Confusing, HELP CENTER, oblique, and obtuse
Our most obvious feature is to make
It almost impossible to import
All your tabs and addresses and connections
Because we are in the 21st century
And we must come together all as one
Because you had nothing better to do
Today except PRIVACY CENTER HA
Spend hours rattling the computer keys
Only for us to say you were unsuccessful
And you must start all over HELP CENTER

Leslie - Disappeared

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

Leslie - Disappeared

“…a nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid.”

Evgraf in Doctor Zhivago

That happy child we used to see at Mass
First communion, confirmation, nice kid
She played the trumpet in the high school band
Then off to the city in her springtime of life

No one seems to know where her body is
Not until after the mandated autopsy
She’s probably stacked with all the others
A refrigerator truck in some parking lot

The President enjoyed his golf game today
Cheerful, and optimistic about the elections

Putting on a Bold Texas Face Against CV-19 - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Putting on a Bold Texas Face Against CV-19

My latest washable mask is from the skilled fingers of a local young woman artisan who crafted it with variations on our Lone Star Flag. When I drive into town on errands I’m not only doing my small part for the safety of others I’m also showing my loyalty to our Republic.

May God bless Texas and may He confuse all her enemies.

An axion of country life in Texas is that a man isn’t fully dressed without his pocketknife. So it was, so it is, so it will be.

And, no, a pocketknife is not a weapon, although as with any other tool (possibly not a tape measure) it can be used as such. A pocketknife is a tool for work, which is possibly what confuses the keyboard commandos and the perpetually outraged who want to ban everything they don’t understand.

Another tool without which a man is not fully dressed for the present is his face mask. Masks can be used by packs of unmanly losers who hide their cowardly mugs while robbing an unarmed store clerk, but that is not what masks are for.

A mask is not about the wearer at all; a mask is about a man’s protectiveness of those whose health is vulnerable to the That Bug (or whatever it is the tubers are calling it this week). Protecting the vulnerable is what men do, the whole “women and children first” thing.

If you think you look silly with a mask, well, that’s pretty much irrelevant because when you wear a mask, a sick child or a recent transplant patient or your Meemaw or Pawpaw along the chain of being will NOT die.

I look pretty darned silly without a mask anyway, so that’s another reason for me, at least, to wear one.

Surgeons wear masks, as do nurses, technicians, and the EMTs who came out to the house in the middle of the night when your mama fell. The masks aren’t for the health-care providers, who are in the peak of health; the masks are to protect your mama. You love your mama, don’t you?

A surgeon or EMT doesn’t argue against wearing masks based on some specious claim about some amendment, nor does he or she have any problem breathing and working and saving lives while wearing them. It’s about duty.

Look, I don’t like masks. I don’t like wearing them. I don’t like going back to the truck for a mask because I forgot it. Masks make my glasses fog. Masks smell funny.

And, sure, those are sorrows right up there with mass murder or mass starvation or desert warfare in Whosedumbideawasthisistan.

Yep, you probably look pretty silly in a mask. So deal with it. Suck it up. Saddle up. Man up. Ride to the sound of the guns. Wear your mask.

A little history re masks:

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2020/07/photos-influenza-masks-1918/614272/?utm_source=&silverid-ref=NTQ1Mjk2NDIyMjYwS0

-30-

Praying for Rain on Saint Swithin's Day - poem

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

Praying for Rain on Saint Swithin’s Day

Oh, yes, there are pale necromancers still
Like poor Macbeth’s witches summoning facts
That rise like bloated corpses to the surface
Of strange electromechanical cauldrons

But we consult the winds, the clouds, the stars
Whose songs and shapes and brilliant silences
Allow us to savor all mysteries
The hymns of Creation from long ago

Some look into little cauldrons for the rain
But we look up expectantly to God

The Vain Hope of Ascending to Heaven Upon Clouds of Toilet Paper - Doggerel

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

The Vain Hope of Ascending to Heaven Upon Clouds of Toilet Paper

A Brief Discourse in Doggerel Verse Upon the False Hopes and Vanities of Hoarding

in Which it is Hoped that Young and Old Will Suffer Themselves to be Wisely Instructed

Upon Certain Errors and Perils. Amen.

We mourn the passing of poor Joe Draper
Crushed by falling cases of toilet paper

And though poor Joe had fever, ‘flu, and gout,
It was the toilet paper that wiped him out

A Pocket Notebook Found in an Old Coat - poem

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

A Pocket Notebook Found in an Old Coat

1. Memos to myself in the long ago:

McKuen asks me for my autograph
Cohen offers me one of his coolest hats
Or maybe that famous blue raincoat
Pushkin’s spirit challenges me to a duel

Book-signing in Harrod’s on Saturday
An invitation from the Bishop of Rome
For the same day as the Queen’s garden party
I need to find full-dress for the Nobel

2. Memo to myself now:

Well, maybe next year in Jerusalem -
I always keep my passport up to date

Woods Spider at Dusk - MePhone Photograph

The larger spider is about the size of an adult human's hand.  The next morning there were more small spiders, presumably the larger spider's offspring.

The Congress of Vienna Sausage - poem

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

The Congress of Vienna Sausage

How strange to find that we are Metternichs
Among a scape of crumbling institutions
Of cracked and weedy streets, with last night’s screams
Souring in the searing, soulless midday sun

Our dreams deferred, our works falling apart
The processes of being that seemed resolved
Now knotted and tangled beyond all knowing
Our spiritual compasses pointing back at us

But we are here, with shovels, buckets, and brooms,
Lifting the CAUTION tapes, and cleaning up

Again




https://www.historytoday.com/archive/what-was-congress-vienna
https://www.britannica.com/event/Congress-of-Vienna
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-congress-of-vienna/

The Centimetre-Worm - poem

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

The Centimetre-Worm

On a summer day

While harvesting the first sunflower seeds
I felt the shyest tickle on my arm
As if the smallest creature in the world
Wanted me to pay attention to it

And it was so – a centimetre-worm
Whose dream was to be an inchworm someday
Arching its little green self in a dance
Of nature: “Look at me too!” was its theme

And when its adagio was complete

I politely bowed the worm-in-training
Stage right onto a refreshing tomato leaf

On a summer day

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 Cup of Morning 'Possum - poem

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

A Cup of Morning ‘Possum

Or

The Great ‘Possum Invasion of 2020

A morning best begins with a cuppa joe
(insert an appropriate ad jingle here)
That first reflective cup of optimism
Given us by our beneficent God

But first I must take the nightly ‘possum away
Far into the woods, away from my tomatoes
The trap set every evening, and sprung every night
‘Possums day after ‘possum day, oh, yay

And so

The garden is at peace, the coffee is hot
The dachshunds are happy, the ‘possum is not

Another cup?



Note: Opossums / ‘possums are beneficent animals in so many ways (https://www.littlethings.com/possum-facts/) and should never be harmed, but if they find your garden vegetables delicious they (the ‘possums, not the vegetables) can be gently repatriated to the wild by way of any of the many types of no-pain, no-kill live-traps. After gardening season I trap them only to put them on the other side of the fence in order to keep them save from the dogs.

Your Job is Essential - Weekly Column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Your Job is Essential

Some say this is the age of the coronavirus (or whatever the deadly infection is being called this week). Perhaps it is, but more than that this is the age of incoherence. No one agrees on what the killer virus is, where it came from, whether it is a perturbation in nature (Macbeth 5:1), an accident of research, or a malevolent plot. No one agrees on masks or not masks, isolation or congregation, work or no work, medical ventilators or not, treatments, schemes, dubious medicines (Macbeth IV:I), numbers of deaths, or the utility of borders (Richard II II:1)

But there is one thing that is, as Shakespeare said, as constant as the northern star (Julius Caesar III.1): your job is essential.

An economy can no more shut down than a state – if it does, it dies. People will die. A parent does not shut down his or her family: “Sorry, kids, no more eating, no more breathing – just shut down. No complaints, please; just die quietly.”

Water does not come from a tap, electricity does not come from a little box in the wall, and food does not come from the store. All goods and services are based on the physical and intellectual endeavors of human beings. The sequencing of water from an undependable and unclean state of nature requires smart, industrious human beings to drill wells, build dams, establish reservoirs, construct pipelines, devise water pumps and tanks, analyze and clean and purify water, and develop a system of maintenance.

Farming and the delivery of clean, nutritious, edible food requires a complexity of physical and intellectual endeavor possible only with a highly developed and thus orderly civilization.

Every bit of honest work contributes to life, to humanity, to civilization: farming, welding, building trucks, driving railway trains, flying planes, delivering the mail, changing the baby, planting a garden, sacking groceries, filling prescriptions, cleaning the ditches for drainage and mosquito abatement, roofing the house, waiting tables, clearing foliage from power lines, building a fence, herding cattle, selling shirts, changing the oil, washing clothes, taking a grandchild fishing, buying, learning, selling, reading, writing, calculating tree volume with a Biltmore stick just as your vocational agriculture or math teacher taught you – all these endeavors feed, clothe, and shelter us now and help carry civilization from one generation to the next.

The Book of Genesis is clear that we humans must work the gifts given us, and that whatever God’s purposes for us, lounging in front of glowing screens and indulging in passive entertainments are not part of them. The Garden is there, yes, but if we don’t turn to and bear a hand, there’ll be nothing to eat.

I don’t have any solutions for the whatevervirus and the current discontents (wear your mask and maintain good hygiene and distance, though), but keeping people from working will – will – make things worse, not only for individual families who will lose their homes and their livelihoods, but for all of humanity. Categorizing any honest labor as nonessential is uncivilized.

Your job is essential.

          Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s   
          happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to
          see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

-Corin, As You Like It III.ii

-30-

The Last Supper via Zoon - unsourced humor

I regret that I don't know the source of this excellent wheeze. If someone does know, please send the information so that I can give credit. Cheers!

Doctrine of Left-Handed Signatures - poem

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

Doctrine of Left-Handed Signatures

For each its purpose every plant is signed
Embedded by the Maker with intents
In willing service to Creation, then
Maybe we shouldn’t tell them how to live

Because if we humans are signed for plants
Embedded by the Maker with intents
In willing service to Creation, then
Maybe they shouldn’t tell us how to live

Dragging hoses for them, weeding for them,
Buying fertilizer – so who’s the boss?


(This is a bit of fun in homage to fictional Sergeant Hathaway in an Inspector Lewis episode, The Soul of Genius.)

Mushroom in a Pot of Mint - MePhone Photograph

Inactive Shooter - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Inactive Shooters

If only there were inactive shooters
And inactive shooting situations -
Cafes where nothing much is going on
And we forget to learn where the exits are

Terrorists too lazy to lock ‘n’ load
Bigots rising up only for another beer
Ku Klux Klankers taking a laundry day
Mad bombers playing barefoot among the flowers

A parking ticket making the front page -
If only there were inactive shooters




Previously published in a vanity anthology, Don't Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, available on Amazon as an e-book and as fragments of dead tree.

The Platonic Tree - poem

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

The Platonic Tree

(If Plato had considered a tree instead of a cave)

cf. Republic, Book VII

For a little child a tree is forever
It is as it was, and will always be
In a dreamy stasis beyond all time
True sunlight flickering pale shadows away

A tree is not a transient republic -
It is a monarchy, and crowned with green
For a royal fellowship ordained by God
This Summer Palace of princes and princesses

As royal children they rule over toys and dolls
Lizards and bees and beetles, dogs and cats
And little chameleons who sometimes pause
To count the coins in their pink moneybags

The ceremonies of ladies and their knights
Are properly observed beneath fair leaves
Upheld by arches and pendentives of oak
Through which sunbeams and magic daydreams fly

And when sweet summer’s children are quite old
Reduced to servitude in paying bills
And answering irrelevant messages
On shrilling importunate telephones:

They will cradle their cave-shadowy ‘phones

And remember that

For a little child a tree is forever

As St. Benedict Did Not Say: Work, Study, Prayer, and a Mask - MePhone Photograph

Sunday-Go-To-Meeting' Mask - Doggerel

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

Sunday-Go-To-Meetin’ Mask

Our faces adorned in baptismal white
We carefully approach the Altar of God
Touching each pew because the mask-y blight
Befogs one’s spectacles - awkward and odd

Because his eyeglasses are but a smear
Each obstacle thus is undetectable
The worshipper indeed approaches in fear
Each confusing visual dialectical

And then…

He falls in clumsiness undelectable
And makes himself an unholy spectacle!

Logging, July 2020 - MePhone Photograph

The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal - poem

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

The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal

(Well, three out of four, eh?)

For David Pitts,

Who Honors his Students

Of math the assistant principal spoke:
The elegance of a geometric proof
When it brightens the mind, the eye the sky
Completing a song of the universe

Of poetry a teacher rattled on:
The elegance of rhythmic verse that tells
Of dancing stars and dreaming mists and life
Completing a song of the seasons of man

Because

All learning is not only right and dutiful
It is a matter of
                           The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

Veterans Drinking Coffee at the Angkor Wat Happy Doughnut Shop on the Fourth of July - poem

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

Veterans Drinking Coffee at the Angkor Wat Happy Doughnut Shop

on the Fourth of July

Everything else was closed, so here we are
At the next table three textbooks are spread:
Physics, Algebra II, and Calculus
The owner’s kid, wiping counters today

Come-from-away children cook and clean, sweep floors
And in between their chores are at their books
The native-born are still abed, asleep
In a smart-phone hangover of lethargy

Last night a man rattled on about glory
He wasn’t with us on the Vam Co Tay

Isolated from the Book Shop for Four Months - poetry

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Isolated from the Book Shop for Four Months

But maybe not much longer…

A Barnes & Noble is a happy place
Where my book budget goes to lose itself
In the poetry section first, and then
To the music by way of the magazines

A Barnes & Noble is that happy place
Where my weary soul goes to find itself –
And that errant budget – among the shelves
Of civilization in a quiet room

Then coffee and croissants (and a six-foot space!)
Yes, Barnes & Noble is my happy place