Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought

                               Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

I don’t need to summon up remembrances
They simply wander in uninvited
In death just as they did in life, good friends
To sit together with our jokes, our drinks, our pipes

We still argue with each other, our minds
So familiar after all those happy years
Thesis, antithesis, and Dunhill tobacco
Ice cubes rattling in the soft summer dusk

Lewis and Tolkien show up late, stern Milton too
Remembrances? Not really – we are forever here



Nota bene:

In Moscow, 1937, during the annual Soviet writers’ congress—a time of severe purges—Pasternak took a courageous stand. Amidst the dull, regime-prescribed speeches praising Leninist-Stalinism, he did something extraordinary. He recited Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare:

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.”

The impact was profound. All two thousand writers in the hall rose to their feet, joining Pasternak in this act of defiance. The number “30” became a symbol of resistance, a testament to the enduring power of poetry and memory.

Introducing a Sunday Series from Douglas Murray: Things Worth Remembering | The Free Press (thefp.com)