Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         You are the Poem

                                  Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 24

A camera time-stops images as electrical codes
Formed by Kyanon Kabushiki Gaisha
And if that is not high art, then what is?
But codes are not you in your many dimensions

Your dimensions of perceptions and being
Your thoughts and happiness, your eternal soul
Your way of comforting a rescue kitten
Your way of writing verse and tasting  soup

A camera time-stops images as electrical codes
But you are a living spring of happy odes

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        A­ Bee Upon my Knee

                                  A Rhyme for Brave Children
                                     From a Whiny Grownup

A bee upon my knee
It hurt’ed me
It stung me with a sting
And died, poor thing

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              If I am Blind, Take me to the Library

If I am blind, take me to the library
I will be comforted by the presence of books
And of those adventurous souls who read
They will tell me their lives, and read to me

If I am blind in some other way, take me to that library
I will perhaps be healed by someone wiser than I
(Most people are)
Someone who will listen to the ticking of my soul
And recommend an elixer of ancient magic

Maybe I’m blind - and sometimes I suspect I am
But you see the wonder in everything

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Stammering Before an Audience of One

                                   Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 23

As imperfect poets upon the page
We scribble limping iambs and push them to go
To an impatient audience waiting downstage
For well-spoken truth in a metric flow

A poem, a play - each is a rite of love
Humbly offered like an awkward child’s bouquet
Go on, then, give the rhymes a little shove
Even though your feet, your tongue, your hopes – all are clay

And if gratitude and admiration are in her eyes
She has granted you the worthiest prize!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                    Anticipating Eye Surgery

I hope when this is done, when this is through
I’ll see the moon as one, and not as two!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                           Humility Through the Looking Glass

                                 Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 22

My glass surprises me; it tells the truth
“Who is that old man?” I ask myself
And it rebukes me for that foolish question
I must admit to the glass that I am old

But when I turn and look outside myself
And greet the happy sun and breathe the dawn
Of a day rich with possibilities
And think of you – then I am young again

I tell my glass it is a silly glass
And it tells me I am a silly ***