Elegy

                  1

Father-in-law Tsi loved his youngest daughter best

I    a poor scholar   became his son

I coaxed her   when I had no money

she dressed me from her own straw case

                         of oddments & old clothes

a few sweet words

she even sold her beloved gold pin

so I could get drunk

Seeking wild vegetables for food

collecting fallen twigs for fuel

she used to look up at the old trees

wishing their leaves would fall

Now I have high office

I cannot share my fortune

now I could repay her

I can only commemorate her

                  2

We used to joke

about what happened after death

now my eyes mirror

the long   long sorrow I've seen

Of the clothes she left

I kept only a few

her sewing box unopened

it would tread on my heart

I remember her kindness

I'm gentle with her maids

tell of our poverty   burn money

so she will not suffer in the other world

All those who have lost love

understand my sorrow

only those who were once so poor

know how sad I am

                  3

I sit alone

mourning my lost love

knowing I'm near

to my own death

One man loses a son

he accounts for it as Fate

another writes three poems

in remembrance of his wife

We cannot change the past

I just hope to lie beside her in our tomb

but I fear she may not be there

I won't even meet her

in the next life

I stay awake at night

never closing my eyes

wanting to reach out to her

to caress away her frown

the worry soaked into her face

Yuan Chen

T'ang Dynasty

Translated by David Sen, Dick Russell

© Dick Russell, 2013

YEATS COUNTRY

Forever they spiral up the tower

smoothing stone with their shoulders

to stand at peak and mimic an hour

of a ponderous gyre about the sun

while cars come and go

and a green bottle lurches towards Sligo

shadows collide on a wall

silhouettes   leaves

sparrows flying up under the eaves

above a secluded room away from the throng

where priapic youth and gaunt girl

play socket and sprong

careless juxtapositions

ambiguities    a cockney with a courtly girl

a book across a wallet

and when meaning is expressed

collisions and repulsions

easier to own a Venus

than to stroke a muse's breast

To enter Yeats country find a Murphy girl

a modern day Maud Gonne

clothed in granny's furs from Harrods

who will bring you to the tower

leaving you there    a lighthouse keeper

dashing your hopes of spending an hour

in a secluded room

in Yeats bleak country poets stand agape

oblivious of landscape

gnawing old bones

questioning the memory of stones

that have long leached light from shape

looking for her foot's lost imprint

where her shadow lingers indistinct

So besiege the tower with determined tread

stand at the peak and demand to know

with cross knit brows and sculptured head

why a green bottle lurches towards Sligo

© Dick Russell, 2013

WHILE THE WAX ROLLED FLUID

A thumbprint left

on lukewarm fudge

telltale of intellect

where intellect trudged

At evensong service

in purple and gold

afterwards   emptiness

and no bell tolled

Richness   incense

marble   aged oak

quietness spreading

its textured cloak

Clean rivers   green pastures

cloud-tipped pines

contrast with cleric gloom

as a full moon climbs

Sunlight   moonlight

Reaper and scythe

alone the mind broods

as images writhe

Like worms in a bucket

plucked from the sod

to feed Cock Robin

not an unattended God

© Dick Russell, 2013, 2017

The Garden of the Golden Valley

prosperity   luxury

like scent    just gone

streams flow

grass grows

breezes blow

nightingales sing

from the tower where she fell

falling petals

fallen beauty

once wrinkled

one's gone

Tu Mu, T'ang Dynasty

translated by David Sen, Dick Russell

©  Dick Russell  2013