Will We Be...Okay? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Will We Be…Okay?

 

After a few Fridays through the Stations of the Cross

I begin to misnumber the Sundays in Lent

Is this the fourth? Or the fifth? Will we be…okay?

This is a season for slipping outside of time

 

And letting the Pater Nosters and Aves flow

Through the unaccustomed darkness and silence

Anticipating the Triduum of death –

Resurrection seems impossible just now

 

We make a muddle of Lent and Holy Week

Because we’ve made a muddle of our lives

 

Will we be…okay?

All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books

 

All of us look for magic in our books

A sale-table paperback during a coffee break

Is a voyage beyond the vending machines

A light at dawn on the first day in Eden

 

But we must bring our magic to the magic

Or good King Arthur will not come again

The Shire will remain befouled and desolate

And morning will not bring us noble knights

 

For we must bring our magic to the magic

Which will not happen if we don’t believe

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

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A repost from March, 2018

 

 

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

 

 

“Forward Electronics, your victory’s achieved!

In all communication, progress is our creed!

Ignorance is darkness, technology is light!

Radio, our watchword; radio, our might!”

 

-Komsomol youth singing in “For the Good of the Cause,” Solzhenitsyn, 1963

 

 

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 are you building a concentration camp?

Who is the Third Murderer in MACBETH? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

 

Who is the Third Murderer in Macbeth?

 

But who did bid thee join with us?

 

-Macbeth III.iii.1

 

Two murderers are hired; a third one joins

The false lady, perhaps, or the tempter himself

As light and love both thicken near the rooky wood

“But who did bid thee join…?” Maybe we did

 

We have drooped and drowsed through civilization

Scorning the sacred texts of our several faiths

Approaching the Altar as a drive-through concession

The Body of Christ and maybe an order of fries

 

Who is the Third Murderer?

                                                Rabbi, is it I?

Did Civilians Write Poetry Back in the Day? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Did Civilians Write Poetry Back in the Day?

 

A medical professional, while taking my pulse

Asked me what I was reading

                                                Poetry, I replied

Poetry of suffering in the Second World War

Most of it by civilians who were there

 

She asked:

 

Did civilians write poetry back in th’ day?

 

I changed the topic to my blood pressure

 

Second World War Poems

Ed. Hugh Haughton

London: Faber and Faber, 2004

 

This anthology is brilliant, with poems by soldiers, civilians, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from many nations. Several of the poems are anonymous, written on scraps of paper found on the bodies of the murdered. There is much fashionable babble about my voice / our voices / authentic voices / my people’s voices, and so on, but here is a fine collection by people whose voices were desperate to tell the truth, not indulge in self-pity, and find beauty among the horror

A Tom Bombadil Day - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Tom Bombadil Day

 

 

                                          “How bright your garden looks!”

 

-Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings, Book I

 

 

Tomato seedlings from the hardware store

Happy little things, six of ‘em to a pack

I sing to them as I drive them home

They seem amused: I am no Tom Bombadil!

 

I sing to them more nonsense songs

(If no sniffy old Lobelias are listening)

As I gently, gently transfer them

With a pat and a prayer into the earth

 

And I sing to them; you will understand

For you too have lived in the dear old Shire

Reality Will See You Now - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

                                            Reality Will See You Now

 

I am a student of medical waiting rooms

The same Motel 6 paintings and decor

Receptionists giggling behind rippled glass

About weekends and boyfriends and inadequate husbands

 

Patients waiting as patiently as Russians

Tattoos and ball-caps lined up in plastic-chairs

Clutching bills and lab reports in nervous hands

Or greasy, year-old copies of Reader’s Digest

 

Or bending over their MePhones in a servile bow -

“Mr. Hall? The doctor will see you now…”