Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                           Lenin in Petrograd


               They're at it again! I wish they'd decide once and for all
                which gang of hooligans constitutes the government of
                this country!

                          -Uncle Alex reacting to fighting in the streets
                                         in Doctor Zhivago (1965)


More men in masks, and wearing scruffy clothes
Roaming the streets and waving rifles about
And which side they are on, nobody knows
Our capital is now all fear and doubt

Some demand my papers, and others my life
Some challenge my accent and exam my skin
Some threaten with a gun and others a knife
And some an unmarked car to throw me in

“Here, sir, the people govern,” Alexander Hamilton said -
No longer, alas; the people’s laws are dead

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

             Leave it to ****** – The Shakespearean I.C.E. Episode

                                         Dramatis Personae:

Ward, a husband and father

Wally, Ward’s teenaged son

June, Ward’s wife, accomplishing hussefery in a dress and pearls

******, Ward and June’s younger son


Ward:

Wally, I knowest thou hath merry plans for the morrow
But I must tell thee, to thy woe and sorrow
That thou’rt to stay home, and mow the lawn

Wally:

Oh, golly, gee, seest thou my face turn wan?
Beloved father, I cannot with thy orders comport
For I cannot find my comradely passport
Nor, in addition to that paperwork dearth,
Yea, verily, my certificate of birth!
Without which workers are subject to arrest
By I.C.E., as the news and warnings attest

June:

‘Tis true – I.C.E. feareth every gangbanger and yob
But they will imprison some kid at his job
And Superman might get thee; I.C.E. hired him today
That is their new truth, justice, and th'American way

******:

Gee, Wally, if thou’rt carried to Alcatraz
Can I have thy room?

Voice Off:                            

                                                      We needeth no stinkin’ warrants!

Exeunt omnes, pursued by Dogberries with guns

Dear Anonymous Friends,

You are too kind. Thank you for the honor!

-Y'r 'Umble Scrivener

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                        Disturbances in Church

The more I am disturbed by liturgical novelties
The less I am disturbed by God

The less I am disturbed by liturgical novelties
The more I am disturbed by God

All of which is logical, not odd

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                 The Season of Back-To-School

                When Americans seize books from their children
    and form charitable committees to give them backpacks instead

A great many people did not say the following:

Once you have read a backpack you care about, some part of it is always with you. – Louis L’Amour

These backpacks gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: you are not alone. -Roald Dahl

Good friends, good backpacks, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. ― Mark Twain

If there's a backpack that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ― Toni Morrison

“Classic” - a backpack which people praise and don't read. ― Mark Twain

When I have a little money, I buy backpacks; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes. ― Erasmus of Rotterdam

I cannot live without backpacks. ― Thomas Jefferson

If you have a garden and a backpack, you have everything you need. ― Cicero

No backpack is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond. ― C.S. Lewis

A backpack, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. ― Madeleine L'Engle

And on the subject of burning backpacks: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain backpacks from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those backpacks.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. ― Kurt Vonnegut

Do you ever read any of the backpacks you burn? ― Ray Bradbury

You don’t have to burn backpacks to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them – Ray Bradbury

Knowing I loved my backpacks, he furnish’d me
From mine own library with backpacks that
I prize above my dukedom – Prospero in The Tempest I.ii.166-168

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                         As You Sometimes Gently Remind Me…


                                One day I'll suddenly recall:
                                The sun exists!

                           Pasternak, “About These Poems”1


When the world focuses on a sheet of paper
In a little room where hopes have come to die
The pen can’t write out a prescription for life
Or limn the remedies for a fallen world

We begin our days as did Pasternak
A cup of tea against the fear, the fear
Unsure of the conflicting daily edicts
The babblings about ballrooms, tariffs, and arrests

Pasternak opened a window to light and fair

And to the children playing in the snow he cried,
“My dears, what century is it outside?”


1Translations vary

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                     The World is Passing By


                      The curfew tolls the knell of parting day

             -Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”


Full moon at dusk, a walking stick, the lane
The neighborhood ‘possum on his supper hour
Bumbling and stumbling to see what the cats have left
Little frogs chanting their Vespers hymns in choir

The evening star as the sanctuary lamp
Advising us of the Presence in the rising mist
The ‘possum has not paused to give his thanks
So I will pause and give thanks in his place

Full moon at dusk, my walking stick, the lane
A fig for the world! This is what we gain