On Reading Robert Duncan

                                        for Eric Mottram

      He spoke of you

      in that time when water

      was a mile down hill

      across ditches through fields

      from the shrine

      your name’s two feet

      so hard to decline now that

      nouns not often decline

  

      from a glistening slate roof

      in sunlight after rain

      a gutter dripped water

      one drip

      quickly two more

      before one dripped again

      repeating in sequence

      one drip two more
      before one dripped again
      in metrical sequence  
      sounds of separation

      twelve feet between negation

      between two sounds

                  drip     splash

               no sound of separation

                 no sound of door being locked

               nails being tapped

                 no white sound just starched aprons

               no sight of nurses just visions in blue

                    sitting at a bedside

               waiting to administrate

                no sound to measure

                  distance between things

                  pipe and rock

                twelve feet between

      in that temple made

      by six rows of two columns

      twelve  feet high twelve feet deep

      enclosing five conjugations

      some voices, some moods 

      and in the center of that shrine 

      sitting beside two smaller columns 

      First Second and Third

      High, Just-As-High, Third

      three gods of first person three gods of second

      sound waves spoking out

                                                  &

                     Robert Duncan said that:
                            Ezra Pound said:

              “the study of literature is hero-worship”

                                  

                                   Dick Russell

                                   copyright © 2015