The Stone, the Shell, and the Lance - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Stone, the Shell, and the Lance

 

-Wordsworth, Prelude, Book V, line 70 and following

 

Mathematics were always quarried stones to me

A chaos of integers, carries, and sums

Cascading down a dusty, crumbling slope

And piled up as a useless heap of rubble

 

But words, layered words, curving and dancing words

Are shimmering shells in stilly tidal pools

There waiting for my eyes, my thoughts, my speech

To play them, work them, hold them as chalices of truth

 

And the lance? The knight, he wields his wicked lance

Only to herd poor prisoners into algebra

Creation Sings Hatikvah - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Creation Sings Hatikvah

 

The Torah unrolls in a soft, whispered wind

The wanderer finds shade under its protection

The scholar refreshes himself with its words

The nations sit and attend to its truths

 

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

 

The voice of God is in the whispered wind

His Words from before the first ever dawn

Flowing through the Beginning and even now

A blessing upon Jerusalem, upon the world

 

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

 

Our voices too are in the whispered wind

The Torah unrolls for us in a whispered wind

 

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

But Mom, All the Cool Kids are into Genocide! - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

But Mom, All the Cool Kids are into Genocide!

 

“Students! Be the Fuhrer’s Propagandists!”

 

Nazi poster ca. 1933, per Library of Congress: [Studenten seid Propagandisten des Führers Hoch-u. Fachschulen bekennen sich am 29. März zur Deutschen Freiheitsbewegung / (loc.gov)]

 

All the cool kids are into genocide

Slogans and posters and bullhorns and cries

Abandoning their studies to march outside

And scream the same 2,000-year-old lies

 

The InterGossip commands, and they obey

Blocking the streets and clenching each fist

Waving misspelt signs and yelling all day

Never pausing to ask if there’s something they’ve missed

 

Am I a hollow echo for some sycophant’s squall?

Will I fail to think for myself at all?

 

Dostoyevsky and Applesauce 2 / $5 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Dostoyevsky and Applesauce 2 / $5

 

Literature in the Supermarket

 

The nice young man who bags my purchases -

He spoke to me of Notes from Underground

And who the unreliable narrator is

And how he anticipates the revolution

 

The pharmacist who jabbed me against the ‘flu –

He spoke to me of Robert E. Howard

And how Conan’s psychological issues

Anticipate the author’s death by suicide

 

A surprising conversation in a small-town grocery

But even more in a modern university

The Aeolian Harb and the Aeolian Tree-Stump - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Aeolian Harp and the Aeolian Tree-Stump

 

Every tree is an Aeolian harp

Singing the Daily Office of the wind

Not often the night’s Matins and Lauds so much

But with the breezy dawn the service of Prime

 

And I know an Aeolian tree-stump too

Of deeper voices through its mysterious hollows

Wind whispering into the damp, dark earth

Then booming out into the air again

 

Every tree is an Aeolian harp

But a tree-stump can be musical too

18 October 2023 - When Missiles Fall Upon Our Vanities

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

18 October 2023 - When Missiles Fall Upon Our Vanities

 

When missiles fall upon our vanities

And children die among our smoking ruins

Will we dare plead our weak excuses to God:

“This isn’t what we meant…”

If Children Ask for Bread Will We Give Them a Statement? - a sentence which is not a poem at all

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

If Children Ask for Bread Will We Give Them a Statement?

 

“The Roman Catholic–Orthodox Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue produced a statement this past June on the vexed issue of papal primacy and the timely topic of synodality.”

 

Well of course they did.

 

 

[What Is ‘Eucharistic Ecclesiology’? | Commonweal Magazine]

A Deer and I Surprised Each Other - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Deer and I Surprised Each Other

 

Silence

We paused

We looked

She leaped

 

I said

Goodbye

But she

Was gone

 

And I

Was left

There all

Alone

People are Dying by the Thousands - Let's All Go Buy Slogan Tees - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

People are Dying by the Thousands – Let’s All Go Buy Slogan Tees

 

XL, L, M, S, and Petite

Guaranteed Ethically-Sourced Materials

 

Domestic carnage now filled all the year

With Feast-days; the old Man from the chimney nook,

The Maiden from the bosom of her Love,

The Mother from the Cradle of her Babe,

The Warrior from the Field – all perish’d, all

 

Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805-1806, Book X, 356-360

 

We busy ourselves in our accustomed ways:

Dishes to wash, the still-green lawn to be mowed

The vacuum cleaner to annoy the household pup

A book, a chair, a reverie, a glass of tea

 

But then

 

The evening news is a call to our conscience

With offerings in two senses only

Tastefully muted sounds and filtered visuals

Across a couch with a motorized recline mode

 

Dead bodies fuzzed out on the evening news

And peace-loving intellectuals chanting

        “Gas the Jews!”

Will There be Coffee after the Crucifixion? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Will There be Coffee after the Crucifixion?

 

Everything’s going to be discovered

And understood in the course of time,

Only we have to go on thinking

 

-Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”

 

Not all are crucified, but all are wounded

We bring our gifts to the Altar; they fall apart

In secretly clinging to them for ourselves

Our claims to be defined by an era

But rotting corpses in a tangled wood

The celebrant elevates the Host

We lift unfocused eyes in grave pretense

Inattentive at the Wedding of worlds

 

The Mass is the central Act in Creation -

Not all are crucified, but all are wounded

A Tale of Herschkowitz - a brief narrative

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Tale of Herschkowitz

 

602^nd Tank Destroyer Battalion

 

My father, who was a master sergeant in the Second World War, told this story of one of his armored car’s crew, Herschkowitz. Towards the end of the war, probably in the area of Zwickau, Herschkowitz was flirting with some pretty German girls. This was probably one of the sanest moments in Europe in 1945.

 

Later my father said, “Herschkowitz, I didn’t know you spoke German.”

 

Herschkowitz replied, “I don’t, sergeant, but I know Yiddish and we all understood each other pretty well.”

 

Thus endeth the lesson.

 

-30-

(Untitled / flashback to Viet-Nam / not for publication)

 

93.  14 October 2023, Saturday in Ordinary Time

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Flashback (not for publication)

 

 

Domestic carnage now filled all the year

With Feast-days; the old Man from the chimney nook,

The Maiden from the bosom of her Love,

The Mother from the Cradle of her Babe,

The Warrior from the Field – all perish’d, all

 

Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805-1806, Book X, 356-360

 

We busy ourselves in our accustomed ways:

Dishes to wash, the still-green lawn to be mowed

The vacuum cleaner to annoy the household pup

A book, a chair, a reverie, a glass of tea

 

But then

 

The evening news is the call of our conscience

The evening news is a long-ago call-back

With offerings in two senses only

Tastefully muted sounds and filtered visuals

 

Not

 

The concussions, the stench, the stickiness of blood, the dust on our lips, the screams we deny, the tears we swallow the impossible pulse that makes breathing gasping hyperventilating fragments stinging the skin concussions concussions concussions make them stop make it all stop running running running over there drag him to the ditch hurry hurry hurry you can treat him there he’s dead his eyes are open to the gravel go back again hurry hurry hurry breathe breathe breathe

 

Why is this happening again why is this happening again

 

Stop

 

That child is dead

 

Stop it

 

What’s that? A dead soldier. He is so small

 

Stop it

 

So many bodies, shrunken into their clothes

A still-clawed arm sticking out from a bundle

 

 

Dead bodies fuzzed out on the evening news

Non-combatant commandos channeling their views

And darling little undergrads shrieking, “Death to the Jews”

My Concealed-Carry Jewish Space Laser (Shhhhhhhhhhh...!) - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

My Concealed-Carry Jewish Space Laser

 

In my state you can carry a switch-blade knife

And shoot an AR with 30-round magazines

Or a .50-calibre Barrett for vaporizing a life

Tote brass-knuckles in your camouflaged jeans

 

In my state

 

Few methods of murder are regulated

But if you read Anne Frank you could be investigated

Three Cigarette Lighters - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Three Cigarette Lighters

 

 

And in what landscape of disaster
       Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?

 

-Thomas Merton, “For my Brother”

 

 

I was strolling along for my digestion and health

Inspecting the refreshing October winds

Counting the summer-tired leaves floating to earth

And noting the brightness of autumn’s yellow flowers

 

Off in the weeds a cigarette lighter presented itself

It didn’t work. A second cigarette lighter did

A useful souvenir of my evening walk

And then a third – three cheap lighters, all in a row

 

A cocaine trail of disposable dreams

Disposable lighters, disposable lives

 

"Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve"

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

“Choose You This Day Whom You Will Serve”

 

“…for whom war was a fresh terror and the corpses of real people…” 

-Matti Friedman, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai

 

A little child ripped from her dead mother’s arms

          Is not a petition for border adjustments

A grandfather murdered while waiting for the bus

          Is not a parliamentary point of order

Teenagers stripped, raped, beaten, tortured, and shot

          Are not cool chants in a university quad

A rotting fragment of a beheaded baby

          Is not someone’s tee-shirt slogan

An elderly woman still marked from Buchenwald

          Is a child of God, not a bargaining chip

 

No deflections

No whatabouts

No evasions

No excuses

 

No

Choose you this day whom you will serve.

7 October 2023 - Anger and Futility

                                                                         7 October 2023

Must Anne Frank be murdered again and again? I cannot write anything meaningful today; I can only sputter in anger and futility.

 

“A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

 

St. Matthew 2:18

Southern Belle Antiques 'N' Stuff - a little East Texas Gothic for Ya

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Southern Belle Antiques ‘N’ Stuff

 

(Slow sibilant bathroom-slipper-shuffle)

 

“Oh, don’t close the door, honey, oh no

If the door is closed no one will know I’m open

English Romantics? Here’s an Edgar Allan Poe

I read lots of books myself; do you like westerns?”

 

(Dark narrow paths tunnel through dark moldy heaps)

 

“I paid fifty dollars for that bolt cutter

It’s almost new; I bought it for my daddy

My brother locked him out of his own house

You can have it for twenty; I live upstairs”

 

(The shambling slippers follow me to the door)

 

“It’s a shame that girls don’t play with dolls anymore

Come back anytime; I’m mostly open”

The Synon on Synodality and, Like, Stuff - poem

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Synod on Synodality

 

“There are to be forty interlocking committees sitting every day…”

 

-C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, p. 36

 

One reads the words of the committees:

 

The grammar of synodality our times the time journeying together breaking molds inclusion experts facilitators process delegation the people totality sense of the faithful organize discussion opening remarks challenges continental stage novelties dynamic legitimize interrelation common discernment modules instrumentum laboris synthesis report road map response paradigm preparation planning natural vision human planning expectations narrative of radical change shifting models of synodality conciliarity emblematic expression methodology dubia divine discourse adjudicate delineating areas of consensus specific situational analyses media framing reinterpreting confidentiality requirements module serenity of the discernment in common implementation phase inclusive ecclesial process participatory ways of exercising responsibility social dialogue regenerating relationships initiate the processes practicing synodality a double dynamic of conversion articulations of synodality ten thematic nuclei to be explored synodal dialogue the potential of synodal engagement national synthesis document consultative sessions what it means to be church social media template an operative notion national synthesis of the people of God contextualize diocesan phase of the synodal process enduring wounds needs-friendly steps for discerning ongoing formation for mission…

 

Brushing aside this choking fog of words

The reader ceases to read, for he sees

A silent, sandal-shod saint in a raggedy cloak

Having fed the chickens now telling his beads

Groveton, Texas, 3 October 2023

 

A Carrier of Bodies - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

A Carrier of Bodies

My stretcher is one scarlet stain 

-Robert W. Service, “The Stretcher Bearer”

In illo tempore:

I don’t know that anyone shouted, “Corpsman up!”

Like in the movies; I was already up

There, where smoking metal scraps stopped in some kid’s flesh

Red fragments of flesh screaming in the sun

Later:

 

Carrying bodies of literature was impossible

But I tried; Wordsworth and Keats during the day

Holes in the patient and in sterile drapes

Red fragments of flesh in the E. R. at night

 

Now:

 

In the evenings I carry Wordsworth outside

And my older self, to a chair at dusk