Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Our Lady of Walsingham

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

Queen of our hearts and hopes, and of each day

Sweet Empress over forest, down, and dene,

And happy Sunrise over the pilgrim’s way

O let us crown Our Queen with leaf and flower

Gathered this morning in the dawnlit dew

For we in this Island are Her true dower

Pledging our faith with thorn and rose and yew

She gives us Her feast day, cool and quiet and green -

O how beautiful is Our Lady Queen!

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Resettlement in the East - poem

Lawrence Hall

ICE deports Afghans and others to Africa, expanding "third country" deportations - CBS News

Resettlement in the East

“It’s my great honor to welcome the world to America

as we celebrate 250 years of glorious freedom…”

President Trump to the United Nations

22 September 2026

Old cattle trains rattling across the steppes

Are now old jets rattling across the skies

While old men rattle out decrees of death

And fondle their most precious testosterone

Young and old rattling their shackles and chains

The shades rattled shut against the light

The rattling of an empty galley bin

Beats time to humiliation, suffering, and despair

In Washington, Getaga, Yaounde

Bangui, Malabo, Mbabane

Monrovia, Kigali, and Freetown

Our masters rattle their ice for another round

ICE Detention Facilities Statistics 2026 | Key Facts - The World Data

The Laughing Altar Girl - couplet

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

The Laughing Altar Girl

A Sunday in Ordinary Time

On the Altar merry laughter

Is a gift forever after

(Even Miz Busy smiled)

Friday, September 18, 2026

In a Garbage Can in DaNang, There Lived a Hobbit - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

In a Garbage Can in DaNang, There Lived a Hobbit

“Take up and read!”

-St. Augustine of North Africa, Chapter XII, Confessions

Quonset huts in rows across the dunes

Smelling of diesel: hot white sands, hot white air

Bulldozers clanking along barbed-wire fencing

Dragonish coils against desperate scrub

ARVN guards in mirror-lensed gas-station shades

In watchtowers writhing in the summer sun

Scanning the huts, each its own tiger cage

Sandbags, heat and sand, metal bunks, heat, sand

A lidless garbage can of civilization’s leavings

And atop some rags and soda cans a book

I stopped. I looked. I took. I read:

“…one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…”

Thursday, September 17, 2026

Where Do Our Dreams Go? - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Where Do Our Dreams Go?

We wake up every morning, still adrift

From night and dreams and fog and hazy dawn

Unless we work the night shift down at the plant

For then we rise to the evening news

When we wake up where do our pale dreams go?

Maybe the first flush makes them disappear

Maybe daylight fades them into non-being

Or they’re put out with the dog for the dawn patrol

And never allowed back in

It’s really okay

if nightmares go away -

I just wish the happy dreams would stay

Artificial Intelligence on the Assembly Line - couplet

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Artificial Intelligence on the Assembly Line

Artificial intelligence can no more displace poetry

Than the Model T Ford can displace the dance

Three Times in the Heart - poem

Lawrence Hall

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love