Lawrence Hall, HSG
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                 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)

If the desire for life is not burning your heart,

If the desire for life is not burning your heart,
go to the flower fields, lie down in the green grass, and kiss it
until it gets your lips green
green  - green -  and
                                    deepen your hands în the black earth,
deepen your hands în the black earth,
squeeze its roots,
                            squeeze its roots,
squeeze its roots, like a child does,
let its juices drain through your fingers

let its juices drain through your fingers

let its juices drain through your fingers

meet the sun rising like a Lover,
let it be your guiding myth,
let it be your silent light,

flow with the waves of the sea,
                                                 flow with the waves of the sea,
randomly, give a hug to a seagull, and dream, dream, dream...

After,
if you are tempted, you can try over and over ... over ...
if help is needed, the wind can help,
                                                    let the heart open like a rose,
share the dawn,
                         roses love to be touched by the morning dew
dew dew dew
dew
after, if you  are tempted, try again, one more time,

(…all we do here, my dear, is try
            to recover
                         the wings we once lost in the rain …)

-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.