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

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                     Weary with Dachshunds

                                   Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 27

With an improving book I go to bed
                    (as P. G. Wodehouse said)
And two improving dachshunds on my pillow
                    (as Wodehouse almost said)
They then begin their journey at my head
Wriggling down to my feet and back again

They slurple messily from my bedside glass
And crumple up my copy of Hercule Poirot
Neither slows: they lick my nose, they tickle my toes
And will they finally doze? Nobody knows!

But

When comes the midnight moon, then all in a cuddly heap
Their little doggie noses snuffle at last in sleep

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      The Lord of One’s Love

                                    Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 26

The lord of one’s love can only be God
For whom all things are loved in gratitude
Kissings as well as blessings, and all are blessed
Presented before the Altar and the Throne

The lord of one’s love can only be God
All other lords are merely utilitarian
Well-honored as long as they know their place
Kings and queens, bishops, happy lovers, and dreams

The lord of one’s love can only be God
That no other love or lord can be

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               The President of Columbia University is Saddened

                   “Why must we fight for the right to live,
                     over and over, each time the sun rises?”

                                        ― Leon Uris, Exodus

Jews are not welcome in the cool universities
The laboratories are shut against them
Libraries, classrooms, meetings, coffee shops
Here, sir, the bullhorn rules (Hey! Hey! **! **!)

Administrators smile weakly and shrug:
We cannot guarantee your safety here
The Merovingian president says she is saddened
That Jewish students are harassed and beaten

The halls of academia are lined with swastikas
And 7 October is remembered with glee

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               The Golden Gate of Jerusalem

The Gate of Repentance

The Golden Gate captures the evening moon
Which shines upon the road a convict walked
At the rubbled base a snake pursues a rat
                                       a very troubled rat
While Roman squaddies stand the middle watch

The Gate of Mercy

The Golden Gate captures the morning sun
Whence the Messiah comes, or comes again
He is the Gate Himself, the Golden Gate
He comes from the Mount of Olives in golden light

The Golden Gate has been blocked for centuries -
This will not always be so

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   The Pulitzer People Did Not Telephone Today

                                  Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 25

The Pulitzer people did not telephone today
Nor did the Library of Congress or the folks at Nobel
I could paper a room with rejection slips
Except that rejections are electronic now

I have no honorary doctorate
Universities do not ask me to speak
Publishers knock at other scribblers’ doors
And my poor verses share leaves with Orlando’s

Which is not as I like it –
                    but there is you
And it is in you that true honors accrue

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                        T­he Great Gate of Kiev

                Mussorgsky’s The Great Gate of Kiev is no hymn to the
                people of Ukraine (telegraph.co.uk)

If there was never a Great Gate of Kiev
Except in Mussorgy’s triumphal hymn
There ought to have been, and there will be some day
Trophied with captured Putinista flags

For now

Wherever a Ukrainian enters Kiev
By rail or bus, or in worn-out army boots
He is the Gate, the Knight’s Gate, the Golden gate
With a chapel and the most wonderful bells

And the pictures at an exhibition
Will be ikons of Ukrainian martyrs