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Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
…Who Gives Joy to my Youth

Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
I will go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth.

                                  -Daily Missal, 1962

                                  For Brother Simon

A child thinks joy is all about the child
And so it is. And maybe an old man feels
That joy just isn’t for him anymore
To kneel his creaking joints before the truth

But it is

A wise man knows that he is still a child
An infant playing before the cave of winds
A Moses borne upon the ancient Nile
A shivering youth stepping into the Jordan

Though the lad be strong and the man be frail
Both are joyful children at the altar rail
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
“Did Y’all Read About Those Chips in the Bible?”

In the Supermarket Checkout Line

“Did y’all read about those chips in the Bible?
Yessir, they got these chips now, and we ain’t
Gonna be able to buy or sell nothing
Without these here chips in our bodies

The C.I.A., some of those people got’em,
Yessir, and you ain’t going to the grocery store
And buyin’ nothin’ without ‘em. I read
Where it’s in th’ Bible, and, yessir, it is

Me, I’m standin’ on th’ World of th’ Lord
And I ain’t havin’ no chip put in, nossir”
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
“Go Inside Your Houses, Please.”

“Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”1 You are
Well advised not to ask questions about
What happened here. Just move along;
There was never anything to see here.

“Go inside your houses, please. All these people
will be taken care of.”2 “You can search Twitter
using the search box below or return
to the home page.”1 Go inside your screens, please

All this awkwardness will be taken care of
Go inside your screens, please. Go inside. Please.

1 NBC
2 Doctor Zhivago, 1965
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would…Sneeze, Probably

O man – what art thou? Thou’rt not mighty
Clingingly pathetically to a Kleenex box
Instead of wielding a conqueror’s sword
Lifting patent medicines, not wine, to thy lips

Thy sneezing and wheezing will not win thee worlds
The book unread though open in thy lap
Thy darked-orbed eyes unseeing and unseen
Thy wretched, reddened nose – all is despair

And snot that runs in foul, polluted streams
O man – thou art little more than Nyquil-dreams!
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith
And the Worthy and Diligent Study
of the Arcana of Mathematics
as Recommended to Industrious and Thoughtful
Young Men and Women

For Kyle,
Who is Enduring His First College Maths

Our Saviour never said “Now solve for X”
Such is not written in any sacred tex(t)

Saints Paul and Barnabas on journeys Psidian
Did not refer to topics Euclidian

The Corinthians were divided only by factions
Never were they divided by fractions

Good St. Paul wanted all to comprehend
The truth, and not some subtle subtrahend

But still…

But still (to me it is a great frustration)
Numbers are how we measure Creation

With them we plant the Garden that is earth
Building it up with word and work and worth

So that we feed and clothe and mend and tend
With crop rows plowed, panels welded, cattle penned

Airplanes launched, fires put out, and light bulbs lit
Messages sent – there is no end of it!

So brew yourself a cup of coffee
Find your Euclid and dust it off(y)

Work those angles on your protractor
Add, subtract, calculate, and factor

Apply yourself most assiduously
Soon you’ll be an engineer, you’ll see!

Admired by all, a man of great knowledge –
And it began in community college
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia

A Scene from a Hospital Waiting Room

Cups of coffee are reverently borne
Along the bright hospital corridors
By nurses, doctors, technicians, and all
Scrub-suited healers on their dutiful rounds

But wait! A lean, energetic old man
His wild white hair brimming his gimme cap
Dodges among the sacred cups, and runs
Up the stairs to the ICU waiting room

Clutching an old encyclopedia
Like a dispatch from the front –
                                                               I wish I’d asked
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
Feast of the Epiphany

Grey days recede into dreary, drizzling dusks
Baptismal rains across the windows slip
And even the candlelight is not proof
Against the gathering gloom of heartfall

Shakespeare leans uncertainly on the shelf
And agonizes over his writer’s block
Milton is writing yet another tract
On faith while smoking Players cigarettes

Warnie and Jack are out for a brisk walk
And Tollers is busy correcting proofs
Under a yellow puddle of lamplight
Bleak Spenser in his grief Kilcolman weeps

We all hold castles abandoned and burnt
Friendships grown mouldy, squabbles unresolved
Walks not taken, rough drafts uncorrected
Pipes gone quite out, cups of tea gotten cold

Has it been that long since I saw you last?
Come in; I’ll put the kettle on for tea
Just leave your coat and brolly by the door
Come sit by the fire; come, and talk with me
(In my part of the world that last paragraph is an alien. There are no brollies and seldom tea;  the milieu is one of cheap beer, illegal drugs, high unemployment, squalor, violence, diffuse anger, and existential despair, but I try to be optimistic.)
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