Ellipses (a Russia series, 42) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ellipses

Upon reading the poems of Anna Ahkmatova

…….. are most useful things; they hide
One’s thoughts from the …….. ………
Who search and sniff each line for any whiff
Of ………, ……….., or …..

Since …… …… in their arrogance,
…………. who forget their place
Will scribble heresies and call it art
But like to hide their plots in lots of dots

Say what you will (but you’d better not):
…….. are most useful things; they hide.

"May I Borrow Your Finger?" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

“May I Borrow Your Finger?”

A small child asked another. An old man turned
To wonder about a question he had never heard
How does one lend a finger? But then he saw:
A fingerprint to open a little ‘phone

For children borrow from each other’s lives, and joy
In all the little daily ceremonies
Of childhood, giggling over telescreens
And, too, their hopes and dreams and ice-cream cones

A finger now a child may lend or borrow
And, as always, maybe his heart tomorrow

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

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dimitri in America

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

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

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

Another Non-Combat Death in Iraq - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Another Non-Combat Death in Iraq

She took an oath to defend the Constitution
But no one seemed to have taken an oath
                                                                      to defend her


(Now back to the Gridiron Dinner)

Contra Ivan Karamazov (a Russia series, 40) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Contra Ivan Karamazov

Though some maintain that parallels don’t meet
And three-point-something is the sum of pi
And whether X is found; no one knows why
(Is it lost, perhaps wandering in the street?)

Curious matters all Euclidian
Even for the bold mathematician
Are as obdurate as obsidian
Each an illogical proposition

To the rationalist impossible, and yet -
Parallel lines are at the Altar met

Soft Targets - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Soft Targets

“…schools, as soft targets, need to be fortified”

-the sheriff of Broward County

Perhaps we are Essenes in the desert
Or Sicarii fortifying Masada
A civilization fragmented, lost
Confused and lost, withering, withdrawing

We are in any event determined
To save something against the future time
Anything – so that men may pray again -
A rosary, an anthology of Keats

Deep in the dust deep in a cave upon a hill
While in the plain below dark armies drill

Chertkovo (a Russia series, 39) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Chertkovo

For Eugenio Corti

Perhaps the site is now a garbage heap
A parking lot, a drainage ditch, a field
Where little children chase a soccer ball
Among the flowers of a Russian spring

Whispering a memory of Italy
For here a poor Italian soldier died
His life ripped from him in a desolation
Of screams and violence and frozen horror:

But he is a candle, lit again, in Heaven where
His feet are always warm, and “Savoia!” is a hymn

Educational Leadership - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Educational Leadership

It’s for the children transparency
Because children are our most important
Resource we need to put this behind us
The children come first the healing process
Needs to begin the best interests of the children
Because we’re a team focus on the children
Distractions it’s all about the children
We need to move forward because we’re a family

He and his attorneys could not immediately
Be reached for comment for the children

Old Karamazov (a Russia series, 38) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Old Karamazov

Young Karamazov – once upon a time
Strolled dreaming through the happy hopes of youth
And surely wondered about spring and love
Wrote clumsy verse, perhaps, for a pretty girl

Then fell unfortunately into fashion:
The acquisition of proud vanities
Through the disposition of dreams and souls
Until he was only an old man who

Sat brooding through the bitter schemes of age
Old Karamazov – lost upon a time

Yes, Yes, But They Need Good Jobs in the Real World - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Yes, Yes, But They Need Good Jobs in the Real World

The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible

The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed

But do you wonder, at night beneath your lamp
Why you are building a concentration camp?

Vocations (a Russia series, 37) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Vocations

“I consecrate you to a great novitiate in the world.”

-Father Zosima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov

The monastery gate opens easily
If it really needs opening at all
The road outside also leads somewhere else
But then it just as often leads back again

The distance measured by a crucifix
Where a weary traveler can pray awhile
Or maybe Harry Bailey’s 1 hamburger joint
A cup of coffee and a cigarette

Offered by a pilgrim in the neon night -
The monastery gate opens easily



1 The Canterbury Tales

Upon Seeing a Shrew Beneath an Oak Tree - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Upon Seeing a Shrew Beneath an Oak Tree

No, no, not your teacher of high-school maths
But an animal so tiny it doesn’t belong
In this harsh world; rather in a fairyland
To live among our childhood imaginings

With spectacles upon its handsome nose
And tiny, delicate, artistic paws
And a fine grey coat, it looks exactly like
A little old man at home with his books

Dozing, dreaming beside his little fire
And never working out the sum of pi

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

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

News from Russia

The Brothers Karamazov, Book II

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

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

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

Upper Respiratory Infection - a poem to accompany wheezes and sneezes and diseases...

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Green Chemicals Against the Evil U.R.I.

Mercy in green, green chemicals in green
Labeled with a catalogue of cautions
One desperately ignores in desperate quest
For a cessation of foul miseries:

The red, inflam’ed throat that censors speech
Fevers fogging over the ways of the mind
Agues arguing against those motions of the limbs
That other times do joy in youth and health

But…coffee next Friday morning you ask?
Yes, yes - I hope to be alive by then

Thank You for Your Service - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Thank You for Your Service

He said that when he came home from the war
He thoughtfully packed all his uniforms
Into his good ol’ Marine Corps sea bag
Took it out to the back yard
                                                 and burned it

Saint Petersburg (a Russia series, 34) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Saint Petersburg

For Anna Akhmatova

Oh, we have strolled the winter avenues
Of the great Czar’s queen city of the North
And argued about Pushkin, over tea,
Great cups of tea in noisy little shops

Where at each table sat a poet or two
With pocket-wrinkled sheets of wild new verse
Set out like armies in desperate defense
Of the holy soil of the Motherland

Yes, we have strolled along the frozen Neva
In dream-bearing Aurora’s sacred light

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

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Lost Copy of

The Brothers Karamazov

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

And then

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

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




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

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

For a Young Friend Visiting Ireland - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For a Young Friend Visiting Ireland

Bring me a poem. You can find them anywhere –
In the Aer Lingus, sitting next to you
And sometimes scattered among the summer leaves
Misplaced in gutters or floating in the air

Strolling along Bachelors’ Walk, or maybe
Adrift upon the Liffey-water, where once
The gunboats roared like dinosaurs, their years
Passing like smoke, like burning, falling walls

Poems everywhere –

Beside the fire, drinking a cup of tea
Or talking with a friend – poems everywhere!

Weaponizing Teachers - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Weaponizing Teachers

Some ‘bloggers have ‘blogged thus:

All teachers trample the Constitution
All teachers promote contempt for the Flag
All teachers should be in an institution
All teachers are weird (and that one’s a f*g)
All teachers despise the military
All teachers should be slowly microwaved
All teachers hate meat; they’re vegetary
All teachers hate Jesus; they can’t be Saved
All teachers are evil; the children are harmed

And now they ‘blog: All teachers should be armed!

Dostoyevsky's House of the Dead (a Russia series, 33) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead

In shackles of shame and under the rod
Our brothers lie upon the Russian earth
In penance suffering for the sins of all
Their common cell is floored with filth and mud
Their common bed a shelf of planks and fleas
Their common air befouled with stench and pain
Their several labors in the heat and cold
That blow the seasons lost across the steppes
Exhaust their limbs and cruelly tease their eyes
With river-visions of what might have been
For them there is no hope within this world

And yet

At drumbeat-dawn there is hardly a man
Who does not kneel before the ikons nailed
As surely to the wall as convicts’ sins
Are nailed with Jesus to the shameful Cross
And take that Cross unto himself in depths
Of degradation and despair that bless
The bad thief first, and even so, the good