Chimes at Midnight

When I’m too old to toil too young to die

I’ll write some lines while my brain’s still spry

Not say in English gone fishing but Greek

a private joke only scholars find wry 

Sing to me muses in tongues I can’t speak

Tone poems in languages I can’t name

Crystallize images happy or bleak

so my words can attribute blame or fame

Translate your meaning so I get your drift

Let me hear your music framing your chords

Picture meaning in words I can make shift

into metrical patterns weaving your words

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

Tell me some tales you never told before

Tell what the future may take from its store

To challenge every species to find

a way forward preserving its own kind

From one day’s generation to the next

sunrise to sunset moonrise to moonset

high tide low tide morning and evening

never knowing what the future may bring

Some more sentient others much more dumb

some with levity cavalier hamstrung

by prejudice innate humor heartless

original sin anything worthless

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

Now make me bolder now make me stronger

Let me be ready to face a danger

Let me project my voice through time

Never let me struggle to find a rhyme

Or fill a line with requisite meter

Choosing my own form from time to time

Trampling iambic feet with anapests

Spontaneously spiking a spondee

Into the dactyl hexameter drone

And making it squeak with dubbed track of glee

Canned laughter cued on demand by a script

Written in the latest language fashion

Launched to the cloud from nondescript notebooks

Noticed by no one except by the swarm

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

Dick Russell © 2024

 Richard M Russell

 Once upon a time

She left a foolscap sketch pad behind

its cover painted with her own design

bright colors blended like her self

I’d gone to fetch her from Bilbao

driving north from Estepona and back again

staying overnight in Valladolid

in a friends’ empty flat on the way north

and then driving south non-stop to arrive in darkness

and my bedroom window was yards from the beach

and she was startled by the sound of a wave

crashing onto the shingle

Dick Russell ©2024

 Richard M Russell

 

Thinking of Insurrection

 

It all comes down to a group of nine

who most of the time voted party line,

and having overturned Roe to great dismay

would they dare to vote again that way?

 

When our freedom is threatened, we fight.

The longer they delay more reason for fright.

Is war almost upon us, has Putin won?

Has misinformation our nation undone?

 

We'll know what game we're in soon.

Will nine Justices sing out of tune?

Strike a discordant note that Trump hears

Or will they sing unison as he fears.

 

Is seeking truth a romantic illusion?

Will nine Justices tell us it’s just a delusion?

 

Dick Russell (C) copyright 2024

         Richard M Russell

In Andalusia

Apple buds blossom

in a cozy kitchen

outside frost rimes the loam 

small fires are wisest

good wood from a lemon tree

scented like her hands

ate soup with lemon

spoons   half rinds impaled on twigs

tastes so bittersweet 

damp eucalyptus

rain slanting toward the sea

feeding the stray dog

fragrance unveils time

glances back rekindle fire

ashes without smoke

foot prints indistinct

she walked through that lemon grove

loam sprang back beneath

warmer winds stirring

passing swans seventeen beats

high clouds pass quickly

In Lanjaron

In Lanjaron    a widow's honey shop

just as Max from Loubressac described

French peasant's fires

three sticks   

            feeding a frugal mound of ash

not Saxon style   

                    but in the style of the Lot

careful smolders   

stone chilled air   

wiping snot

modern Mason jars for honey

seemed out of place

where she sat 

conversing with portraits on the wall

father and son

           beneath whose portraits we posed

while she incanted Spanish prayers

to those she said    

                 were watching from above

atop the stairs to Heaven 

where they beckoned her to come

leave her honey from the vega   

                                    our stares 

of disbelief

then she took our money

Botine, Madrid, May 1st, 1985

Ernesto, when you were here

it was simple wooden tables

seating on long benches

roast suckling pig, wild strawberries

Today, your 14 cousins from Phoenix

you know, the ones for whom the bells tolls

especially today, have spilt wine on the table cloth

red wine like a bloodstain on a white shirt

Richard M Russell © Dick Russell

                 February 2024

 Bringing in the Wine

did you not see

water cascade from the sky 

the Yellow River will surge straight to the sea

never return

did you not see

a person stare sadly at a mirror

counting their white hairs

morning is as green as spring grass

soon night comes

snow covers the grass 

do you not see

we must not be sad

never let our goblets go empty

why was I born

if no use exists for me?

what point would there be

if that should be true?

bring in more wine

if I spend all my wealth

each gold coin will come rolling back

roast a sheep   slaughter a cow

let's drink at the least 300 glasses

to you Sen    a toast

& to you Tang Chin

drink up my friends

don't let me see your goblets stand idle

I'll sing you a song

so listen intently

what is there left apart from wine

I only want to get drunk

never again be sober

saints and scholars are all forgotten

only those drinkers remain

Prince Chen paid ten thousand crowns

for 1 cask of fine wine

he banqueted in the palace of perfection

how come mine host that you tell us

all your money is spent?

I'll sell my best horse   the best of my furs

my servant shall scour the town

to bring in more wine

so drink up my friends!

we shall drown the sorrows of 10,000 generations

if we don't drink now

how will we ever appease our grief

Li Po

T'ang Dynasty

translated by David Sen, Dick Russell

Published in Chapman Chinese Issue, Scotland, 1972

Coda:  Those Songs

(And Li Po also died drunk

trying to embrace a moon

in the Yellow River

(Ezra Pound)

The words of those songs would be hollow

if my love of your company was not in them

those songs would be cold

like snow on frozen mountains

where torchlight never comes

clouds sail after you

what will life be now you drift downstream

leaving the moon moored here?

snowflakes fall on this poem

Dick Russell

Chapman Dick Russell Issue, 1975