From the Litany of the Recusants

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

From the Litany of the Recusants

From our sins                                    libera nos, Domine

From the state registry of our sins     libera nos, Domine
From the subtle lens                          libera nos, Domine
From the hidden microphone             libera nos, Domine
From the smiling informant               libera nos, Domine
From the caring whisperer                 libera nos, Domine
From the concerned observer             libera nos, Domine
From the information gatherer           libera nos, Domine
From the technician                           libera nos, Domine
From the grief counselor                    libera nos, Domine
From the resume’ builder                   libera nos, Domine
From the committee that wants only

          what’s best for us                     libera nos, Domine

From the executive session                 libera nos, Domine
From state-licensed compassion         libera nos, Domine
From sensitivity training                     libera nos, Domine
From inclusiveness                             libera nos, Domine
From free zones                                  libera nos, Domine
From the acronyms                             libera nos, Domine

O Lord, in Your infinite mercy, grant that we will never be persons of interest, and that we will never be noticed.  Protect us from fame, guard us from reputation, and save us from the fires of progress; in the end, lead us to Heaven in spite of our many failings and the good intentions of those who want to serve and protect us.

German Food in Baytown, Texas: The Little Bavarian

A young friend introduced me to The Little Bavarian, a little German restaurant and deli at 407 W. Baker Road, Suite V, Baytown, Texas 77521, across the road from Ross Sterling High School

The Little Bavarian is a great little hole-in-the-wall place in a strip mall, featuring a good, solid German menu.  Don't look for a veggie plate or any obscure vegetables; this is the real stuff.

The Little Bavarian also features a neat selection of German food and chocolate.  

281 420 2244
thelittlebavarian@yahoo.com
www.thelittlebarian.com

A Brief Review of Tolkien's THE FALL OF ARTHUR

The Fall of Arthur.  J.R.R. Tolkien.  Ed. Christopher Tolkien.  Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York.  2013.

This book contains the text of Tolkien’s unfinished The Fall of Arthur in four cantos and part of a fifth, running to about forty pages of Anglo-Saxon meter and mostly in modern English garnished with a few charming archaisms. 

The poem is delightful, and will appeal to Hobbit-istas and to those who enjoy Beowulf, “The Seafarer” and other Anglo-Saxon poems in translations that keep the A/S form with its four-beat line, alliteration, and kennings, and Arthurian tales and topics.

The rest of the book, over 170 pages, consists of detailed essays in what-is-this-about detail by Christopher Tolkien, and a singularly unhelpful appendix not explaining Old English verse.  Tolkien minor never uses one word when he can throw in ten, and the (to me) strained connections between the poem and Middle-Earth are obscure; this material is for the true Hobbit-ista.

The Fall of Arthur, the poem, is really good, and I will re-read it and mark the more of the allusions and obscure words far more than I did in my first, hasty reading.  A clearer and much briefer explanation of Anglo-Saxon verse for those, like me, who did not pay attention in high school senior English would have been useful, and the turbid essays and the Hobbitry could have left out, resulting in a smaller, more pocketable vade mecum (cf. Everyman’s Pocket Poet series).

Christos Voskrese!

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

Christos Voskrese!

For Tod

 

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,

A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp

And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night

In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell

And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;

The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

 

 Published in Longbows and Rosary Beads, http://longbowsandrosarybeads.blogspot.com/, 5 May  2013

Happy Clover

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
April, 2013

 Happy Clover

Brave little clovers scorn the mud and ice

Of dreary February’s indecision;
They bloom beyond the glass, the dead-dry heat
Of cinder-block cells and fluorescent lights,
That eternal summer of electrons
Shot from cool cathodes of ruthless progress
Against the holy mercury vapour:
Et flickering lux facta est to fall
Like home-office visitations upon

File folders full of fond fatuities,

Computer screens glowing the latest truths,
Stained coffee mugs that advertise good times,
And happy-happy photographs, staplers,
Photographs of acceptable partners,
A cartoon that was funny years ago,
Tape-dispensers, all elbowing for space
On the certified Plains of Abraham.
Oh, happy little clovers, fix for use
Some nitrogen in anticipation
Of the fragile, needful grass of summer;
Be proof against predatory herbicides,
And in the north wind dance your promises.

Camping on the Edge of Forever

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
April, 2013

Camping on the Edge of Forever

For Mike Marconett

of happy memory

Bright star, beyond a Sterno stove’s brief glow,
We’ll live forever as we live this night:
Coffee and cigarettes and comradeship,
Our backs against the sun-warmed Sierras
As the cold falls from infinite darkness
To keep the snow in place another night,
To smile in ancient silence back at you,
To make a glowing, slumberous twilight until dawn.
Those C-rations were good after a day
Of scrambling among pre-historic rocks
Made musical by the dinosaur creek,
Water as cold as the dark end of time.
San Diego glows in the south-southwest,
Silently, inefficiently, light lost.
But you, dear, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.

Court Day

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
April, 2013

Court Day

So sullenly he sneers and slouches there

Behind a menu that he will not read
His mother smiles apologetically
And orders milk and cereal for him

He sulks beneath his franchise baseball cap

And grunts into a little plastic box
Then shoves it back into his pressed knee-pants
His mother smiles apologetically

                  tips apologetically

                  pays apologetically

The waitress with her chalice takes communion ‘round

Refills the cups at each creaky table
Newspaper stories, what is this world coming to,
Bacon and eggs, toast, orange juice, refills, life

Beyond the misted glass the old court house

Begins to take the early morning light
Like an old man taking his first cup of the day
Having another go at civilization

A rural Thomas More parks his old truck

This Chaucerian sergeant of the law
Will plead the usual catalogue of not-his-faults
The lad will smirk and feign apologies

The creaky tables of the ancient laws

To be served with irrelevant custom
The lad asks for change for the Coke machine
His mother yields

apologetically

A Twilight Study

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

A Twilight Study

Perhaps there is no reason why these thoughts
Should be reconstructed, recalled, re-read, 
This dusk in spring, soft-scented, green, and still,
With cumulous clouds rehearsing for the summer,
Silently flinging the falling sun about,
And from the grass the early mosquitoes
With tiny, unseen wings grudge wheeling birds
Utility, charm, sometimes majesty.
Mischievous cats dancing like couplets in rhyme
Along the fence-top in alla breve time
Torment with pirouettes the ground-bound dogs,
Provoking from their playmates envious barks,
Prologue to a reconciliation
And Eden’s sleep beneath the ancient moon.
Why should this hour, gentle with Vesper joys,
Be scanned and disciplined as iamb’d lines
In poor remembrance of reality,
A catalogue of senses lived in time
And reconsidered then on ink-marked page,
Or screen luminescent within a box?
Old Adam knew such tranquil gardened evenings,
And generations yet beyond the stars
Will live on earth such happy sunset peace;
Yet still, somehow, this moment of Creation
Is now commended to a leaf or so,
And when the actors of these moments past
Joy in the eternal summer of God,
Maybe, after whispering to the skies an evening hymn,
Someone will read these lines, and delight in them.

 Published in Longbows and Rosary Beads, http://longbowsandrosarybeads.blogspot.com/, 5 May  2013

A Diva's Demands

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

A Diva’s Demands

Let be set out a wooden crucifix

Of indifferent and artless workmanship
Upon a table where the lamplight falls
In yellow circles on a book or two,
And sheets of paper and a quirky pen.

Let be set up a surplus Navy bunk

With mattress and blanket, and pillow too,
If Brother Guestmaster has them to hand,
Luxury enough for merciful sleep,
Or combat desperate against fearful dreams.

Let be set into the wall a hook or nail

To serve the office of a wardrobe there,
Burdened with little but perhaps too much:
A decent habit for the liturgies,
A worn-out coat, a hat against the sun.

Let be set into the cell an exile,

A man of no reputation at all,
Unnoticed in the streets, unseen, unknown,
But who delights in anonymity,
Here in this palace in Jerusalem.

Hunted

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

Hunted

 

A fugitive lopes through the ghostly woods
In animal despair, haunted, pursued,
Soul-stumbling in the spirit-grasping shadows,
Lost in the moonless cold, the hissing night.

His little plastic box still shows two bars.

Poll: Armed Revolution Could be Necessary

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

Poll: Armed Revolution Could be Necessary

Those who have never bagged corpses

After a night of flarelit horror
Confused, concussed, their souls awash
With blood and smeary shards of flesh
Incensed in obscene stench of death
Are calling for armed revolution

Let us call instead for a cigar

And a quiet evening with Keats

A Debt of Nature

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

A Debt of Nature

This pine tree was no aged forest giant,

No storied marker of Texas history;
It looked nothing like a Doric column,
Or a temple sacred to golden Apollo,
Or a cathedral scented with ancient prayers -
Since no cathedral features viscid bark -
Nor yet again a sentinel or spire.
No, it was but a good loblolly pine,
Discreetly failing after long service,
And, taking tendrils of wisteria
Down to a most surprising end for them,
On a quiet day it measured its length
And sighed its completed story to God.

Books on Watch

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

Books on Watch

A day closes in obedience to the clock,

To weary yawns, more yawns, and wonky joints.
Words read are unremembered at this hour,
And pages lie open, idle, unseen.
The window panes reflect only this room
And its books, neither neat nor catalogued,
Slovenly ranks of civilization,
Askew, aslant, but yet on duty still;
They stand, and in defiance face the dark:
Poetry, novels, histories, and art,
Biographies and essays, music, too –

Even in their silence they seem to say

Slink off, dark Chaos, for here we stand and stay.

Oklahoma in the Spring

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

Oklahoma in the Spring

 

A young mother cradles her broken child
Amid the fragments of her world, her soul.
Blood drips.  Rain-sodden insulation drips.
Stillness between storms.  The trees are all gone.
A dark Sargasso Sea of shattered wood,
Bricks, clothes, books, toys, rags, glass, papers, bodies.
In the gasping heat the rot begins now.
No houses.  No lights.  A helicopter
Floating valley boys with plastic boxes
Taking cruel pictures and O-My-Godding
For the telescreen (between soda ads).
And in fortresses of personal affronts
Keyboard commandos leap into inaction:

People who choose to live there deserve it.

We told you that global warming is true.
We didn’t have these things ‘til they kicked Jesus
Out of these here schools. And paddling, by God.
It’s Obama’s fault.  Or is it George Bush?
It’s the Republicans. Public schools. Gaia.
British Petroleum.  Coal.  SUVs.
Suburbs.  Not reading the Bible.  Comets.
You’re stupid. Well eff you, then.  Eff you more.

While in the second lowering line of storms

A young mother cradles her broken child.

Polwygles

Lawrence Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com
May, 2013

Polwygles

Polwygles bathe in pools, primordial ponds,

As fingerlings in amniotic seas
That rise and fall through seasons, rain, and heat,
And breathe forth life into a springtime world.

Polwygles then in metamorphosis

Begin to bubble at the warm, sweet air,
Slow-swinging, flinging new and awkward legs
In lieu of childhood’s diminishing tail.

Polwygles rise to try their sticky toes

On land and leaves and stems, those unknown worlds,
Mysterious as a moonlit night in May,
There fully to be formed for yet more life,

And grown-up frogs are given the gift of song

To after-ask “O where do we belong?”

 

“Polliwog” is an anapest (../); the amphibrachic foot (./.) (yes, I had to look that up) of the Middle English “polwygle” (I had to look that up too) worked better for my purposes, and permitted me to show off.  That “amphibrachic” is in its first two syllables close to “amphibian” is probably an accident.

$20.13

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com
26 May, 2013

$20.13

May and June remain The Graduation Season featuring noisy assemblies in gymnasia or football fields wherein recordings of Elgar’s “Land of Hope and Glory,” which is about the British Empire, are miscued on electric gadgets made in China. In the meantime, the solemnity of graduation is marked with the sacred cowbell, the holy air horn, and the blessed vuvuzela.  This rite of passage, which, objectively, is not a rite at all, requires a gift.

Selecting a gift for the graduation speaker is easy – a one-minute egg-timer. 

Selecting a gift for the graduate is increasingly difficult. 

Once upon a time (when we were all poor but didn’t know it), a pen was an excellent choice as a gift for a graduate.  Pens were elegantly made and meant to last, and like a suit and a watch suggested that the bearer was going to escape following the plow or the cross-cut saw.

In East Texas there is no audible difference between “pen” and “pin,” and someone in need of a pen asks “Have you got an ink-pen?” and pronounces it “Have you got uh ink-pen?” 

Young people (and it’s their fault, right?) don’t know that some pens are aesthetically pleasing works of art and can be refilled; under-forties are familiar only with disposable, made-in-Indonesia ink-sticks which don’t work well or last long, on those rare occasions when the writer is not tippy-tapping on toxic plastic keys made in China.

Once upon a time (when we were all poor but we had love), a father took his graduating son to Mixson Brothers and bought him his first grown-up suit for graduation itself, and for job interviews, parties, weddings, baptisms, and funerals.  The play-clothes of boyhood were put aside; the young man began to dress as a young man.

But now that the Medicare generation creakily disport themselves in knee-pants, flip-flops, Grateful Dead tees, and Toronto Blue Jays ball caps, no thoughtful parent would ask young men and young women to dress as godawfully tacky as their grandparents.

Once upon a time (when a dollar was worth a dollar), a watch was a very useful graduation gift, because the man who needed a watch wasn’t following the position of the sun or the mill whistle as a schedule; he was doing better.  Watches now are historical artifacts like mill whistles, for the modern young man of affairs refers to his MePad for the time.

A Bible?  Well, which one?  Should the Old Testament follow the Alexandrian canon or the Palestinian canon?  Old King James?  Middle-aged King James?  New King James?  And who says?  Given the number of specialty renderings (there is even a C. S. Lewis Bible, in a translation that long post-dates his death), should the words of Glenn Beck and President Obama be printed in red?

Perhaps the safest graduation gift is a nice little check for $20.13.  The graduate can apply it to the purchase of his own pen, suit, watch, Bible, or life, and he will be very grateful to you.

I know the political script requires that I write “they,” but one graduate cannot be “they,” and “he” in context is gender-neutral, as it always has been.  Young people can be a bit rebellious, and you and I can hope and pray that they will always rebel at least a little against their political masters who try to bully them into following the Orwellian Newspeak illogic, both in syntax and in ideology, that one is many and many are one.

-30-

Messiaen's La Nativite du Seigneur

Naji Hakim plays Olivier Messiaen's LA NATIVITE DU SEIGNEUR on the Grand Orgue of the Church of La Trinite, Paris.  Vol 21, no 2, The BBC Music Magazine Collection.

This assemblage of disconnected riffs, motifs, stunts, tricks, and noises reminds us why pastors, assistant pastors, vergers, and the nice folks who tidy up after divine services should be careful to keep the church organ locked lest someone walk in and abuse it.