Let Us Proceed to Sonnet 32 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Let Us Proceed to Sonnet 32

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 31

 

There is a reason why Boris Pasternak

Did not recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 31

To the Soviet Writers’ Conference in ’37 -

 

It’s a mess

While Clenching Their Fisties - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

While Clenching Their Fisties

 

Old men do not now argue politics

At the coffee table in the grocery store

Old men, like some university students

Simply say what they are ordered to say

 

By voices bellowing from Orwellian telescreens

 

While clenching their Trumpy-grumpy fisties

When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

 

I don’t need to summon up remembrances

They simply wander in uninvited

In death just as they did in life, good friends

To sit together with our jokes, our drinks, our pipes

 

We still argue with each other, our minds

So familiar after all those happy years

Thesis, antithesis, and Dunhill tobacco

Ice cubes rattling in the soft summer dusk

 

Lewis and Tolkien show up late, stern Milton too

Remembrances? Not really – we are forever here

 

 

In Moscow, 1937, during the annual Soviet writers’ congress—a time of severe purges—Pasternak took a courageous stand. Amidst the dull, regime-prescribed speeches praising Leninist-Stalinism, he did something extraordinary. He recited Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare:

 

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.”

 

The impact was profound. All two thousand writers in the hall rose to their feet, joining Pasternak in this act of defiance. The number “30” became a symbol of resistance, a testament to the enduring power of poetry and memory.

 

Introducing a Sunday Series from Douglas Murray: Things Worth Remembering | The Free Press (thefp.com)

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls

 

 

“Choose you this day whom you will serve”

 

-Joshua 24:15

 

 

For those who are desperate to be accepted as cool –

 

You cannot straddle the walls of the holy Temple

You cannot straddle the barbed wire of Auschwitz

You cannot straddle the banks of the Red Sea

You cannot choose two sides and call them one

 

Since the Hitler time there have not been two sides

 

You cannot wear both the tallit and the snakeskin

You cannot break bread with your grinning executioners

You cannot dance to circled drums and bullhorn chants

You cannot forswear your family murdered in the gas chambers

 

Since the burning time there have not been two sides

 

He who chooses the fashionable, the clever, the cool

Chooses to be a kapo, a funktionshaftling

His people will despise him, so too his masters

                   (Who in the end will kill him in his shame)

And his memory will be a curse, not a blessing

 

But you –

 

Choose bravely so that your name will be written in The Book

And written in the hearts of your proud descendants

 

When Fortune and Men's Eyes are in Disgrace - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When Fortune and Men’s Eyes are in Disgrace

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

 

A good thing with being disgraced in men’s eyes

Is that that mostly they don’t notice you at all

As a nobody you are but a shadow at best

Or an accessory in their empty scenes

 

If they don’t notice you, then you are not disgraced

And you have better things to do anyway:

Children to raise, songs to sing, books to write

Each day’s honest labor at your honest craft

 

The resolution is

 

That some men might be disgraced in your eyes

That is, if you choose to notice them at all

And Why is There a Police Car in Your Driveway? - poem

 Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

And Why is There a Police Car in Your Driveway?

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 28

 

The days are a mess and so are the nights

Each day is burdened with labors unrelenting

Toils industrial and toils emotional

Everyone seems to want a bite of you

 

At night the stresses follow you to bed:

The boss’s write-ups seem to poison the pillows

The unpaid bills, the clapped-out car, the fears

The children’s report cards, the broken washer

 

You give life your all – you work, you struggle, you strive -

And why is there a cop car in your drive?

These Here So-Called Schools These Days - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

These Here So-Called Schools These Days

  

“Lead, Follow, or Get the H*** Out of the Way” 

-a sign on the bulkhead in recruit training

  

Those coffee-shop cynics drowning in dejection:

Some of them wallow in existential abjection

And some meet every hope with an objection

Or with a sneering, irrelevant deflection

 

          But I did something other than b**** and moan

 

I voted in my local school board election