Someday a New Arthur
Someday a new Merlin among the ruins
Will give a new Arthur a trove of hidden books:
Chaucer and Milton, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Keats
And maybe even long silent Malory…
Tag: Mack in Texas
Ice Wednesday
Many crosses of ice but no ashes
Trees sagging from the icicles dragging
Little birds desperate for last summer’s seeds
The ice ground whitening, whitening, disappearing
A Saint Valentine’s Day Gift for my Daughter Who Lives Far Away
An agent of the federal government
May or may not deliver a package to you
Tomorrow, or not just one but maybe two
Or maybe one package at one time…
Kristin Hannah’s Winter Garden, Sort Of
James Lee mentioned that he really liked Kristin Hannah’s novels, which I pooh-poohed as chick-lit. He assured me that they are really good, and that with my love of Russian literature I would appreciate Winter Garden, parts of which are set in Leningrad…
Read MoreIf Your Life Were a Time Capsule
If your life were a time capsule of sorts
In what cornerstone would you brick in
Against a mysterious opening day
When someone in the future would open you up…
A Saturday Morning In The Bookstore
Why are there now so many books of lists of ten things we must do before we die? Why not nine, or eleven? And why should pay someone for a list of experiences he says you and I must fulfill before we shuffle off what Shakespeare is pleased to call this mortal coil? Will my life be meaningless if I don’t jump out of an airplane over Scotland, see a famous statue in a Buddhist temple in Bangladesh, eat fried snake in Singapore, bicycle through Kenya, visit some snaky island off Honduras, or flush a certain Czarist toilet in St. Petersburg?
Read MoreThis Fog Won’t Last
Oh, no. The night is misty indeed, but the stars –
The stars still shine; be brave, and look for them.
Some Say This is the End
Some say this is the end of the Trump era
Some with glee
Some in mourning…
Karens
I love me my Karens, good, sweet, and kind:
Junior high love-notes and school yard flirtations…
Yevgeny Yevtushenko Admires Himself
Recently I finished a book only half-remembered from my youth, Yevtushenko’s A Precocious Autobiography. I had no idea that a poet I had long admired was such a phony.
Read MoreStorm Heaven, if You Will
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall (Rated G) In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige. -C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost Storm Heaven with your selfless prayers, if you willBut not your […]
Read MoreA Covid Christmas
But first we celebrate the great world’s turning
With Advent and the holy Christmas time
With liturgies followed by the Yule log burning
Through feasting and cheer, and each well-sung rhyme
The Advent of Our Discontent
Everyone accuses everyone else
Of treason; they’d call each other Quislings
If they had any history, but they don’t
Only Hochhuth and Unferth on the air…
Waiting for the Messiah Someplace Else
The Magi journey through space and time
Our journey is in waiting for a star
To shine upon us all, and lead us to
The Temple where all waiting finally ends…
The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal
Of math the assistant principal spoke:
The elegance of a geometric proof
When it brightens the mind, the eye the sky
Completing a song of the universe…
“I Had a Lover’s Quarrel with the World”
Mr. Frost crafts smooth, flowing iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, sometimes rhyming but sometimes not. That he makes rhyme work so well demonstrates the excellence of his art; there are only five – arguably six – vowel sounds in English, which rhymed through the pen or keyboard of a learner usually ends in clunkiness or unintended comedy.
Read MoreA Busy Dachshund Puppy
She bites into cranky old Pepper-Cat’s tail
(Something so twitchy must surely taste good)
And Pepper-Cat spanks her; oh, what a wail!
(Dear pup, there’s a difference between could and should)…
Tolkien: A Review of a Book and a Movie
J.R.R. Tolkien, a Biography by Humphrey Carpenter is a nice little biography for those who love Tolkien and the Inklings. Humphrey Carpenter’s several biographies are always well-researched and, even when alluding to awkward moments in the subjects’ lives, infinitely kind and generous.
Read MoreBooks Are Secret Places
Books are secret places where words go to hide
When the world goes wrong, and children are hurt
By grownups who never learned how to read or love
Or even tell funny stories around the campfire…
You Shut Up! No, You Shut up! No, You Shut Up First!
Censorship is the control of public speech by a government agency; it has always existed and always will. Even the freest government cannot allow state secrets to be published. Censorship, when kept in its legal place, is good; when it is not kept in its legal place, it is bad.
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LogoSophia Magazine 