Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]

                For a Political Friend Who Politically Accused Me
            of Having My Apolitical Head in the Sand Politically


                     Our lives no longer feel ground under them

                           -Mandelstam, “The Stalin Epigram”


I have no illusions

I have no solutions

I have Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump

                    (And occasional basal cell carcinomas)

I can be silenced in fear

By their suicide sides

But I have a brain

                    (“…an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.”)

And so to them

I am dangerous

If I am noticed at all

“The F_g with the Bow Tie” 1

            “Only in Russia is poetry respected – it gets people killed.
              Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a  
              motive  for ******?”

                                                -Osip Mandelstam 2

Spain. Poetry got people killed in Spain -
And still wherever tyrants of delicate nerves
And artistic sensitivities hear
Whispered rumors of whispered disapproval

And so an innocent, fearful and trembling
Must be motored away to a moonless death
Upon orders spoken, written, tweeted
Telephoned, telegraphed, or teletyped

One prays he has a moment to adjust his tie
Perfectly - as an honor to Poetry




1 The slur is attributed to Federico Garcia Lorca’s murderers:
https://lithub.com/dictators-****-poets-on-federico-garcia-lorcas-last-days/

2 Quoted by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 20th Century Russian Poetry