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)

We are here,
no matter what, we are here,
and
never stop,

We are here to try and
desire.

If the desire for life is not burning inside your heart
go in the flower fields, lie down in the green grass
deepen your hands în the black earth,
squeeze its juices,
let it drain through your fingers,
meet the sun rising, let it be your guiding light
flow with the waves of the sea, give a hug to someone
and dream, dream, dream ...

After,

if we are tempted, We can try again,
if help is needed, We can help,
We can share, if the heart opens for sharing,
After,
if we are tempted, We can try one more time

all We do here is try ...

-attributed to Stalin
           in a note forbidding the arrest of Boris Pasternak

Stalin and Caesar had no use for dreamers
Stern men of destiny prefer strong tools
To execute their leader’s will, and yet
They cry and beg when they are eventually shot

Cloud-dwellers camouflage themselves with words
And shift their sails but not their souls, and keep
Their little ships on course straight to the stars
Straight on until the dawn they help to light

Courage is in your dreams and words and works
May it please God that Stalin has no use

For you

Some Year’s Day

What century is it outside?

-Boris Pasternak

It’s a fair question: what century is this?
There was fog in the morning, this first day
Of the new year, and later overcast
There was nothing new in any of that

The fat grey squirrel raided the bird-seed at dawn
Which is why he is fat, and dampness dripped
From the roof eaves onto the long-dead leaves
There was nothing new in that, either

The first cup of coffee, the same old news -
It’s a fair question, it is: what century?

Spring**

How many sticky buds, candle ends
sprout from the branches! Steaming
April. Puberty sweats from the park,
and the forest’s blatantly gleaming.

A noose of feathered throats grips
the wood’s larynx, a lassoed steer,
netted, like a gladiatorial *****,
it groans steel-piped sonatas here.

Poetry! Be a Greek sponge with suckers,
among green stickiness drenched,
I’ll consent, by the sopping wood
of a green-stained garden bench.

Grow sumptuous pleats and flounces,
**** up the gullies and clouds,
Poetry, tonight, I’ll squeeze you out
to make the parched sheets flower.