At Foyers

                                                        for Jessica

           

Donnelly sat in the kitchen at Foyers

at midnight

while an actress

home from her play

just stood at the stove

lost in thought

making herself cocoa

the household

asleep in their rooms

it was late

he was annoyed she was there

disturbing solitude

oblivious that poetry

had come to life

in front of him

just a memory now

that actress

so Donnelly’s assets increase

as his life winds down

and can shards of broken poetry

be reassembled    

made whole    containers

for meditations?

or will we know of him just these scraps?

through Google  

Donnelly searched the net for names

sometimes found

an old friend

untimely

dead

                                    © Dick Russell, 2013, 2016

                                Death

A fisherman

rested last night

at the foot of these cliffs

watching the sun set

at dawn   he drew water

from a sparkling river

collected dry bamboo

for a fire

prepared tea

before I awoke

he had packed and gone

while sunlight burnt off

this damp low fog

do I hear him rowing

away     pulsating sounds

magnified by mist

echoing from cliffs

under a rainbow

I look after him

down the fjord

white clouds

above far cliffs

chase each other

                        Liu Tsung Yuan

                        translated by David Sen

                            revisions by Dick Russell

©  Dick Russell, 2013

                                   A Problem of Translation

A hawker is not

         a man with a falcon on his wrist

is not

         a man with a tray of wrapped candy bars

is maybe

         a baseball player spitting at the plate

         before hitting a homer

or

is Homer

that man unrolling a scroll

standing to one side

conjuring images

©  Dick Russell, 2013

         Now is No Time

                   A look  full glance

                    the head turned round

                    returned

                    by a walking girl

                    swinging her skirt

                    we follow through

                    the evening street

                    now fallow

                    with the summer heat

                    lone girl

                    bare feet walking

                    turning in a doorway

                    out of the heat

                    and passion

                       simmers

                    in the street

                    thinking all the time

                    ideas all the time tangle

                    a blue pool

                    lies in the lap

                    of green willows

                    a synthetic idea

                    compounded by

                    a bridge

                    bone china

                    lulling labels

                    advertise fables

                    now is no time

                           ©  Dick Russell, 2013

Wake Widening Astern                                                

 Keel of Bright Words

                       (for Karen Wedeles)

                1

White water at wing-tip

gulls flying before bow-sprit

white water at wing-tip

gulls crying before storms

clear light for arriving

eagles soaring     far seeing

empty fish pans     empty wallets

high hulls      hollow sounding

        so disconsolate

        pebbles skipped like a discus

        sink beneath the waves

        courage

        don't weep

        though for a million reasons

approach me again

approach me once more in your tangles

       

        wild & wantonly

        wound & woven

        confusion come seeking me

with goat bells jangling

hooves running before me

into your mysteries, secrets safeguarded

rapt in a furled wing.

                2

in the foothills

hooves sinking in loam

amid fallen oranges...

& amid another grove

hooves pressed leaves

twigs grass into the loam

& the loam sprang back...

trying to avoid that grove

but she always confronted me

& weakening I stumbled

into the impress the loam had prepared

hooves lightly on my bones

skin dried by sun

untouched avoided as carrion

& always she was coming toward me

but she did not come straightway

but let me hear she was approaching

while skin swollen

flesh leaving the bone

senses slowed to the rhythm of the grove

which knew seasons and not days

& always she approached me

but she did not come

& I knew she would not

& I could not go or stay

knowing and not knowing

for a moment

I was happy

Andalusia, Spain, February 1970

© Dick Russell, 2013

                     For a Spiral Bound Note Book

putting pen to paper   then

      pulling pages from a pad

            isn't easy

when the perforation is more for show

            than utility

this page clung to its stub

      like an infant to its mother

            an archetypal image

                  of an immortal

                        poised on a stepping stone

                              a stream in spate

      while her infant child

            still at suck

                  slipped    slid    from her breast

                  &

            pipes played

            nymphs sang

            muses inspired

            a child was weaned

    so now these words separate

    themselves from their author

    go out into the world on their own

                                    © Dick Russell, 2013

                        While Washing Windows

When Donnelly worked as a window cleaner

equipped with a bucket and a bag of rags

he'd work awhile then stop and ponder

streaks on the glass that were drying fast

Window cleaning     work all poets should try

so many moments of calm to savor

visions of an innermost eye

As once when a stranger to her darkened room

he watched her brow touch the pane

against the streetlight's glow

Remembering how her silhouette

pressed sodium yellow to the brain

he'd squeeze his sponge for another wipe

then start to work again

                                         © Dick Russell, 2013

                The Surgeon’s Lament

                    Like a knife against a sharpener's stone

                    my presence wears on her abrasively

                    sharp from her disdain    I'm yet a dull bone

                    for her dog    she scorns me derisively

                    and now she tells me   for her   I've grown old

                    she means I'm boring    I don't turn her on

                    she means   I’m sure    she's found others less cold

                    I was always left hot from her friction

                    I doubt she kens her keen impact on me

                    surely she must   for she's kept all my gifts

                    unwrapped    unread   one day those books will free

                    her from grief    the facts    how to get face lifts

                    So I'm a love-sick serious surgeon

                    if only her nose had not led me on

                © Dick Russell, 2013

                          Lilac Time                                      

                                            for John Berryman

Lilac time has come and gone
campanulas are over
bumble bees work summer flowers
no honey bees this year
fuchsia fronds on slender stems
cascading greens and browns
daubed with crimson
a hummingbird at sip
 
Lilac time is Berryman time
who wrote so he would survive
from one day to the next
but did not survive
cheerful projections he made
predicting
his own demise

he died one January day in Minnesota 
a most serious month 
no lilac found in his hand
no bees to bury that man

lilac time has come and gone
campanulas are over

                   ii

so we      who chose to combat life

are we any less than they?

who threw their lives away

thinking it hopeless

lilac time will come again

campanulas too

of course he died one January day

a most serious month

three years before Microsoft was founded

when lilacs could not be seen in winter

even in digital dreams

just picture books and paintings

and color TV

                                    & said Mr. Bones

                                    don't forget The Movies

                                     © Dick Russell, 2013, 2016, 2018

                     Up High

                          Here      fast winds

                          high skies         sad monkeys chattering

                          there     small islands

                          white sand       birds circling

                          while forests

                          are stripped of leaves

                          a river flows on       forever

                          never stopping

                          I'm miles from home

                          overwhelmed by autumn

                          like my own life

                          gloomed with decrepitude

                          even here    up high

                          I'm not serene

                          I'm old        worried

                          my heart    like clouded wine

                          I must stop drinking this dusk

                                    Tu Fu

                                    T'ang Dynasty

                                    translated by David Sen, Dick Russell

                                     © Dick Russell, 2013

                                    an earlier version

                                    published in Chapman Chinese Issue, Scotland, 1975 

                                    editors: Walter Perrie and Joy Hendry

   

    Remembering Bruce Choppin

                          1 

       I learned from Google that Bruce was dead

       He died in nineteen eighty three in Chile

       "in problematic circumstances"[i]

        on his way to a job in Singapore

        I took over his apartment

        on Morningside Drive

        after he left New York

        one evening a girl came by

        to retrieve some stuff 

        but she took one look

        went off in a huff

        some parting jest?

        I never asked

              2

       The Girl In New York

She was Lebanese    clever    strongly made

I with important “work” and a big head

words woven in harmonious brocade

won’t bring her back to life-for she is dead

she killed herself     and since I was obtuse

I’ve felt regret all through these busy years

for we met for coffee  -  talk was no use

I know now at an age when all coheres

when I heard she was dead I was shamed

I’d sensed her despair but did not reach out 

gave nothing of myself    though as yet unclaimed

except by ambition and nagging doubt

She is dead    beyond questions    beyond love

my work!  so what was I so afraid of?

               3

         Images

             oil paint

  a trembling mare

  a field of corn

  a crimson scythe

  a stallion

stars swoop down to tongue

                                         Lethe

      a dark river

      white cliffs

      tongue flicks

      her liquid image

      her dewdrop

  now an iron foundry

  a din of words

  & candlelight

Ladies

I know you     ladies

            tail thumper run

            run white scud

2 wolves

a big double bed

sunlight

& still the sunlight

               4

          New York

     now that the sun

        lies in the avenues

 shadows move the streets

 this heat has become an emotion

            of

         pillars

         pillars

                 cloying

misted

         pillars

         tiles

         steam

     the heat dampens impulse

an opulent belly bejeweled with droplets of

                 shower

the bowl of the lavatory is a misted image

          this heat

          this heat

             feels

     as fingers in the vulva

          this heat

     melds the edges of

             sex

    go only

       goes only

           with the beat of the humid

                                                 heat

   & the flop

        wet kneed

              to sleep

                                                © Dick Russell, 2013

---

[i] http://www.rasch.org/rmt/rmt84e.htm