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?

Binding Each Word with a Prayer - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Binding Each Word with an Incantation, a Charm, a Spell

 

You. Not a generalized out-there “you” but – YOU

 

Gentle Writer

 

A mysterious thought is dream’ed unto you

Or a conclusion sails from your observant mind

 

You take a pen of goose-quill carefully carved

You dip it into a horn or pottle of ink

Not a metaphorical inkhorn of floridity

But the horn of a beast, hollowed out

Stoppered with a fitted wooden plug

And charged with ink of a curious blue

Of minerals or dyes or the juice of berries boiled

And worked with pagan spells or Christian prayers

 

You take an expensive page of animal-skin

Worked out with scrapings and scrubbings and acids

Or perhaps imported sheets of Egyptian papyrus

(Against which some of the younger brethren sneer)

 

Remember the annual budget! Be careful, now!

Paper doesn’t grow on trees, you know!

(Well, you could argue about the papyrus)

 

You set the light just right, the sun or a lamp

The Altar is where candles glow in honor of Our Lord

(And then there’s the budget; candles are expensive)

So you must work with the sun or a tallow lamp

At a writing slope angled as the amarius says

 

You think a thought

You lift your pen

With a prayer upon it

You guide it down

You write a word

 

A word

 

Each word is magic

 

 

 

 

 

 

What did you write?

Front Toward Enemy - very short free verse poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Front Toward Enemy

 

If

In what we may laughingly call real life

You can read those three words

You’re in the wrong place

‘Bye-‘bye

The Cold Has Gotten Old - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Cold Has Gotten Old

 

 

  For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snow-storms...

 

-Thoreau, Walden

 

 

The cold has gotten old without Christmas trees

And little lights in all their vestmental tints

No longer counterpoint the dark northern breeze

No visions of spring, no dreamings, no hints

 

The happy lawns of summer are mud and frost

The path to the cowshed is a rattle of sleet

The trail to the fishing hole was yesterday lost

And our boots are too thin for our freezing feet

 

But after our chores boiling hot coffee, please -

The cold has gotten old without Christmas trees!

Nothing You Write is Confidential - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Your Poem’s Background Check

 

And above all, who is in power in that part of the country,

or, rather, who will be by the time we get there?

 

-Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

 

We don’t suffer a Soviet Writers’ Union

Except that we do – and what are you up to?

Have you written an ordinary adjective

That will be forbidden in a future place?

          You sound suspiciously colonialist

 

Last year DEI was mandatory

This year it will be a forbidden scheme

What guidelines for little magazines

Will be cleansed in the New Order to come?

          Harriet Monroe is a non-person now

 

Who will be in charge of your poetry and your life

Whenever you don’t get to wherever it was 

          that you were going?

Your Changes Have Been Made - poem

 The transfer has botched the formatting. Please accept this as is.

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Your Changes Have Been Saved

 

 

Noticed the passive voice              the passive voice is to be noticed

 

You did not make changes             changes were not made by you

                                                       but changes were made

 

You did not save changes                 changes were not saved by you

                                                          but changes were saved

 

If you were relevant you might have been consulted

Imagine There's No "Imagine" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Imagine There’s No “Imagine”

“Christendom has had a series of revolutions, and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

-G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Imagine a world without anthems that whine

It’s difficult if we try; the ‘seventies cry

Rockabilly tunes in the communion line

And fling fluorescents from a dropped-ceiling sky

 

The ‘seventies tell the Bible what to say

And dangling speakers program us with a primitive beat

Manifestos proclaim the ideology of the day

The Gospel is reduced to an electronic tweet

 

But, peace! 

 

The tie-dyed ‘seventies still croak and wail

But it is the Eternal that will prevail

 

12 January 2025

Stand-To for Night Patrol - short poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Stand-To for Night Patrol

 

 

The Americans were said to believe that the Communists are on the defensive…

 

-New York Times, 11 January 1970

 

I keep seeing a boat’s black silhouette

Upon the red water, against the red sky

And the black-death tree-line along the shore

A dark, decaying scene, and I don’t know why

There is More Than One Book - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

There is More Than One Book

 

A civilization writes and reads its books

As poetry, pictures, prose, and glorious song

Of war and work and love and peaceful fields

Scholarship and courage and a people’s arts

 

But when unhappy men with an unhappy god

Maintain that their one book is all we’ll need

In submission to build an empire of death

The threat is clear: their god doesn’t want us

 

Reading and writing are civilization

From the very beginning of Creation

52 Hebrew Words - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

52 Hebrew Words

 

Max gave me a book: 52 Hebrew Words

For Christmas

Appreciate the irony that isn’t there –

If Judaism isn’t real, then neither are we

 

Words in Hebrew seem to be topped as flames

As Light - the light as truth, the light for truth

As flame for sacrifice, as flame for peace

As Torah unrolled, all Creation unrolled

 

Everything begins with a word, the Word

Today we will begin with Shema – Hear

 

With gratitude

 

 

52 Hebrew Words. Dave Adamson. Christian Art Gifts: Bloomington

Reading the Room - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Reading the Room

 

I don’t know to read a room, but look –

I’m still pretty good at reading a book

A Colonial project - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a victim of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a perpetrator of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Am I a victim of

 

A Colonial Project

 

Or is it

 

THE Colonial Project

 

And whose?

 

I think I’ll make a pot of tea

 

If that’s not too colonial for anyone

 

And would you like a cup?

 

May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

May Our Children Live Long Enough to Invade Greenland

 

Man arrested entering the Capitol with a machete and three knives

 

-U. K. Daily Mail

 

 

No weapons in the Capitol; it’s a rule

The adults who work there must be safely bubbled

But when some pimply oaf brings a gun to school

No one in D.C. seems especially troubled

I am a Ptolemaic - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

I am a Ptolemaic

 

 

There was a star danced, and under that I was born

 

-Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, II.i.349

 

 

This little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got

Our Narnia, our Middle-Earth; it’s green

It’s green and blue and round, an almost-sphere

Fitted with all the ancient conveniences

 

Let the stars encircle us as a crown

And who will dare to say it is not so?

For we are commanded to grow this garden

By the light of the sun, and of faith and love

 

As Shakespeare might have said, this blessed plot -

This little world isn’t much, but it’s what we’ve got

"LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt”

 

Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art and Its Discontents

 

No.

 

A fire brings nothing to a halt

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives -

 

A poet abandoning her car to flee for her life

Holds to her heart her notebooks in grocery-store bag

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

A trumpeter manages to save the mouthpiece at least

While carrying his child out to an ambulance

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

A sculptor’s eyes record a wall of windows

To be re-molded as life-filled windows of dreams

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

Firefighters wrestling a hose through smoke and heat

Are a choreograph of life against flaming death

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

An artist whose studio is now but smoke

Will stir ashes and water, and paint again

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

A little girl will write of her little dog

Her bestest pal whom she never saw again

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

In a shelter tonight an aging man

Will sing to himself the love songs of his youth

 

To the last respiration of the very last soul

And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

 

 

 

                                   then patch

 

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

 

-Mary Oliver, “Praying”

“Now, Therefore, Write for Yourselves This Song” - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“Now, Therefore, Write for Yourselves This Song” 

 

 

-Deuteronomy 31:19 per Talmud at My Jewish Learning <community@mail.myjewishlearning.com>

 

 

“Nunc itaque scribite vobis canticum istud.”

 

-Douay-Rheims

 

 

What song will you write for the people of God?

Something from the Prophets or the Laws

A hymn for Mary, dancing in the spring

Or maybe praise for patient and protective Joseph

 

What song will you write for your own true love?

Gentle rhyming for the music of her gentle laugh

Iambics and meters her intellect to please

Birdsong sweet to limn her holiness

 

What song will you write for the world God made?

Matins for mist and mountain and flowered glade

Epiphany Moved and Improved – The Magi Must Re-Schedule Their Arrival Time

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Epiphany Moved and Improved –

The Magi Must Re-Schedule Their Arrival Time

 

Whatever committee decides these things

Has chosen to shift ancient feasts about

For the convenience of the modern world

In scheduling meetings and interviews

 

Magi following a smart watch in the sky

The ostler wants the stable cleared by ten

King Herod tapping massacres on an app

Plough Monday must be reset to Tuesday next

 

Whatever committee decides these things

Is stricken deaf when the sacring bell rings

Why Do They Say He was Tragically Murdered? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Why Do They Say He was Tragically Murdered?

 

Was anyone ever joyfully murdered?

Happily murdered?

Humorously murdered?

Gloriously murdered?

 

When at dusk a mist begins to rise

A sinister mist from across the fields

And you seem to perceive a malevolent being

Peering at you from the tree line dark

 

Yes, something is watching you

 

It is not God-banished Grendel from Beowulf

Nor is it Nesferatu creeping up to you

Or a Haunt arising from a long-lost grave

It is something even more grotesque and obscene:

 

                                            An Adverb

The Presumption in Wake-Up Calls - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Presumption in Wake-Up Calls

 

A wake-up call is but a manifesto

Retro 1968 but less literate

Demanding that the world pay attention

To the temper-tantrums of some middle-aged guy

 

Who knows all about guns ‘n’ bombs ‘n’ stuff

While the rest of us know all about raising our kids

Working 12-hour shifts, paying our bills

Building our lives, and taking care of each other

 

The rest of us have grown-up things to do

    The presumptuous waker-upper

Should ditch his childish ego and wake up himself

Activate Your Card Now! It's Easy! - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Activate Your Card Now! It’s Easy!

 

‘Enry ‘Iggins, Tiffany in Calcutta, and my Cousins Down the Road

 

There even are places where English completely disappears -

Why, in America they haven't used it for years!

 

-Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady

 

California and council flats, aye, there’s the nexus

Great Britain taught the world English right and proper

But in hearing my cousins from Caney Head, Texas

I conclude that the Empire has come a cropper!

The Unit Not Labeled for Retail Sale - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

This Unit Not Labeled for Retail Sale

 

You can’t break me apart, she said to me

This unit is not labeled for retail sale

And if you think that you like what you see

You can post your money for the emotional bail

 

A Christmas candy said “The Unit Not Labeled for Retail Sale” so I had a little fun with that.

The Stray 'Possum Cafe - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

The Stray ‘Possum Café

 

The only comparisons in Western literature might be with the Romantics or the Beat Generation, but the Russian Silver Age poets outdazzled them in glamour and intrigue.

 

-Darran Anderson

 

 

We lay our scene not in Saint Petersburg

Where Anna Ahkmatova flirted and rhymed

With Gumilyov, Mandelstam, and Tsvetaeva

Among champagne, cigarettes, tears, and pearls

 

In the old and storied Stray Dog Café 

But in a field on a December night

Where two opossums meet in quest of love

And wrangle in the leaves of intimacy

 

Poor strays making…art…without any fear

Of execution by the Kremlin Mountaineer

 

 

Saint Petersburg’s Stray Dog Café was a matrix for art, music, dance, and poetry from imperial Russia to the Soviet horror, and thence into the world.  It almost serves as a sort of hinge between the 19^th century and the 20^th. Please read Darran Anderson’s professional and thus accessible article in City Journal: Anna Akhmatova’s Bravery.

 

I am having fun with intruding ‘possums among the Silver Age poets, but as for them, yes, they are essential. Their brilliance still shines for us and influences what we write even if we are unaware of them – and for that most of them were murdered by the mad tyranny of Communism.

So This is the New Year - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

So This is the New Year

 

 

The road goes ever on and on…

 

-from at least three variations of a song in The Lord of the Rings

 

 

About this new year – it doesn’t look so new

A metaphorical kick of the tires suggests

It’s been down many roads before

But then, so have we

 

About this new year – it doesn’t look so new

But the first sunlight in the bare oak trees

And upon last summer’s ground-shoaling leaves

Lead me to pull on my boots and step outside

 

Frost, sky, sunlight, cardinals, squirrels, life

About this new year – it looks pretty good now

The Last American Westclox Baby Ben - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

The Last American Westclox Baby Ben

 

(Maybe)

 

 

It ticked into my heart at the Goodwill store

Two dollars’ worth of Americana

A charmer in a battered metal shell

Hiding behind a tired plastic face

 

The tick, the tock, the talk of Peru, Illinois

The clock that woke America each dawn

For work and study, and to meet the Chicago train

For a century until time ran out

 

It clicks and clanks and ticks and tocks and talks

 

All-day dutiful hands, a jangling bell -

How long will this old clock last?

 

Only time will tell

Hanukkah is a Light That Always Gets In - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Hanukkah is a Light That Always Gets In

 

 

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

 

-Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

 

 

Eight candles of the mind, then, of the soul

In a time of hooded pursuivants

Seeking for truth so that it might be suppressed

Seeking for light that it might be extinguished

 

 

There mustn’t be any candles, then, in the windows now

In this Abomination of Desolation

Where wrapped in reptilian rags from Amazon

Sullen illiterates screw their eyes against the light

 

If you are somewhat broken, read from the scroll

Beneath the lights of Hanukkah

Eight candles of the mind and of the soul

 

 

Note on the quotation: Babblings on the InterGossip led me to verify the above quote, which is from the poem “Anthem” published in Leonard Cohen, ed. Robert Faggen, Everyman’s Pocket Poetry series.

A Porch of Worms on the Feast of St. Stephen - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Porch of Worms on the Feast of St. Stephen

 

These winter squalls are almost springtime rains

Warm days, cool nights, and windblown showers at dawn

And on the porch appear some curious stains

Dark squirming squiggles progressing up from the lawn

 

Up from the lawn, up from their earthen beds

In desperate trails of iridescent slime

As peristaltic tubes with wavery heads

Rhythmically marking out their march in time

 

But all too brief their escape, alas -

A feast for robins who will not let them pass

Did You Enjoy Your Christmas? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Did You Enjoy Your Christmas?

 

 

Christmas Night

 

 

That merry little Christmas that they sing about –

Did you open your gifts around a tree

Tinsel and ornaments and a brilliant star

Pajamas and cocoa and merriment

 

Did you enjoy a dinner with someone special

Or with happy children and a few friends

Then coffee and cake and quiet memories

Everyone free from telescreens and devices

 

And now with a fire and soft candlelight

Is this another gentle silent night?

 

I hope it is so, dear friend

O Little Front Line of Bethlehem - for Christmas Eve

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

O Little Front Line of Bethlehem

 

Stopped and questioned multiple checkpoints

A search of their persons and their vehicle

And a stern warning from the local patrol:

“You are not permitted to draw on public funds”

 

The Holy Family arrives at last at a no-tell inn

“I need to see two forms of identification

And a major credit card from any on this list

Fresh linens are extra; the ice machine is broken”

 

Surly men in grubby camouflage smoke cigarettes

Occasional gunfire lights up the noisy night

Last Christmas I Gave You my Pancreas - a wheeze

(From The Saint Tibbs' Day Songbook)

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Last Christmas I Gave You my Pancreas

 

I thought there was an idea here

But maybe not

                             Just a few questions, ma’am

About the guy who received your heart and gave it away

Did he drop it off at a re-sale shop?

 

Giving a body part at Christmas is sing-able

Because

“Last Septuagesima Sunday I gave you my heart”

Is not something you can dance to easily

Especially if you have no cardio-pulmonary functions

 

I thought there was an idea here

Maybe it’s those Nyquil dreams again…

For Two Dear Children on Christmas - couplet

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

For Cate and Jack

 

Or Jack and Cate?

 

On Christmas

 

 

Certain joys about Christmas are always true

For among the season’s constant blessings

                                                          Are you!

Do dogs have souls? Do We? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Do Dogs Have Souls?

 

“Behold, I make all things new.”

 

Revelations 21:3-5

 

Do dogs have souls?

Oh, how can one look into those big brown eyes

And not know the answer

Our Dear Leader in His Jet Pilot Sunglasses- doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Our Dear Leader in His Jet Pilot Sunglasses

 

Democracy is dead, a memory, a husk

Selected, not elected: President Musk

By Reading This Content You Agree to OUR Privacy Policy - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

By Reading This Content You Agree to Our Privacy Policy

 

 

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander

when you were…within range of a telescreen.

 

-Orwell, 1984

 

 

But your privacy? Nah; deal with it, you see

Baked beans, magazines and mountain scenes

Vacation trips and handy houseware tips -

They see you, they know you, they hunt you

 

Podcasts, partisan views, gossipy news

Engine parts, how-to vids, and funny kids

Treating head lice, tax advice, dancing mice

They see you, they know you, they hunt you

 

Through your made-in-Shanghai Palantir

Adverts will forever make you fear,

My Precious

The O Antiphons, the Star, and Us - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The O Antiphons, the Star, and Us

 

Solstice is not a time when the sun stands still

But rather a season when the sun stands aside

That we may better know the mysteries of deep night

In darkness just before deep Light returns

 

Out in the cold, and warmly wrapped in hope

We pray the O antiphons as we scan the sky

For the prophetic Star we long to see

The Star that guides us in our wanderings

 

You (Formerly Known as You) - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

You (Formerly Known as You)

 

X, formerly known as Twitter

And then there is you

Formerly known as you

 

Go read a book

Go get a job

Go get a life

Go get a clue

Work in the yard

Volunteer at the school

Wash the dishes

Clean up the house

Raise your children

Be positive

Be a role model

Be a real mensch

Be a real friend

Be a neighbor

By the Grace of God

Be truly you

 

You are no one’s glassy-eyed parasite -

Go out into the world and do yourself proud

Camp Pendleton in Springtime - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Camp Pendleton in Springtime

 

Field Medical Service School, 1968

 

 

There was no warmth in our sleeping bags

Spring rain sluiced down the dark and through our tents

Decaying tents from the Second World War

The Corps would spend no money on tents or us

 

But we were young, and playing at war was fun

We kept our rifles dry but nothing else

And yarned throughout the cold and soggy nights

Long days and nights mud-fighting the VC

 

Sometimes an hour or two of soggy sleep

But in my pocket, warm words from my favorite poet

A Brief Not-Exactly-a-Review of Elie Wiesel's NIGHT

Lawrence Hall

mhall46184@aol.com

Night, Elie Wiesel

My father (602 Tank Destroyer Battalion) was one of the liberators of Ohrdruf / Buchenwald and then Dachau.  When I was a child he talked on a G-rated level about his time in the army, the usual recruit training stories, his buddies, his time in England, Normandy, the Bulge, and where he was (Zwickau) when the war in Europe ended but without detailing the horrors. When I returned home from Viet-Nam we did talk about these things. He told me WHAT HE WITNESSED, WHAT HE SAW, WHAT HE SMELLED in the death camps.  He said that someday people would deny the reality of the death camps and the genocide against Jews and others. I thought that that he was being pessimistic, that surely the world would never deny what we humans are capable of and that Jews would never again be persecuted.

But he knew.

To our great shame, and to our judgement before God, anti-Semitism is not only tolerated but is now fashionable. Through an obscene moral failing in blaming victims,  Elie Wiesel, Viktor Frankl, Charles Coward, and other survivors and witnesses are now accused of lying and their accounts denied. The blood-libel the people Israel is back.

There is much talk of transparency just now, but that is irrelevant if we blithely accept the facile bleatings on the InterGossip and campus beer-parties instead of reading the primary sources left to us, the written and recorded testimonies and the visual records made both by the Nazis, who were proud of their satanic death-cult, and by the liberators.

NIGHT, written shortly after the liberation in terse, tight, clear, unadorned language is a place to begin.

About That Beautiful Lady Sipping a Cup of Earl Grey - short poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

About That Beautiful Lady Sipping a Cup of Earl Grey

 

You’ve noticed her, I see – just a word of advice:

I was chatting with her over cups of tea

I mentioned that Earl Grey also tasted nice over ice

There was ice indeed as she turned away from me