Saturday, June 14, 2025

Glenn Hughes Develops his Theme

A Work in Progress
48


We see Glenn Hughes teaching a small class in Denny Hall in the 1930s.  Gone are multi-media effects, instead there is chalk and blackboards.  On one of the blackboards is a triangle with names associated with the three vertices.  Aldington, Theseus and Catullus' H.D. Ariadne and Lesbia; Ezra Pound, Dionysius/Bacchus, Caesar

“Myth adapts.  While the key motifs stay the same, new tales are continually being told, founded on series of events, broadly considered, which are seen repeated again and again.  For example, Orpheus having to plead for the life of his beloved Eurydice; and, a man loving a woman and subsequently losing her.  Either the woman is unattainable due to some circumstance or, very often, it may seem as if the man has betrayed the woman.  He might disobey the gods like Orpheus and turn back to look at Eurydice as they are about to emerge from the underworld, or, having enjoyed her favors, as did Theseus with Ariadne, he could just decide to travel on, leaving her on the shore of a Greek island.   In the play I’ve written, the young Catullus wanting to try his hand at soldiery, leaves behind a Lesbia who felt as betrayed as did Eurydice and Ariadne before her.  Aldington had to leave H.D. to go into the British Army.  He volunteered when he was about to be conscripted.  He left his wife distraught from the loss of their still-born child.  By the time he came back from the war he had another love and she was pregnant by another man.”

Lesbia’s slaves are displaying another coverlet.  This has an embroidered scene showing Theseus fighting the Minotaur and escaping afterwards by spooling up Ariadne’s thread until he emerges into sunlight again.

Next Episode (Denny Hall)

We see Glenn Hughes lecturing again – this time to a larger audience in the 1050s.  He uses colored view foils. 

 “Catullus breaks off from writing the story of Jason and the Argonauts and the marriage of Peleus and takes us by way of an embroidered coverlet into the story of Theseus and Ariadne, in particular to Ariadne abandoned on the beach at Naxos by Theseus, not the outcome she was expecting.  She had helped Theseus slay the Minotaur.”   

hen we see H.D. abandoned on Dover Beach in the moonlight by a quiet sea listening to the dull roar of artillery across the English Channel and watching the far glow of war above the far dark horizon.  

Glenn Hughes again: 

“Now Ariadne was rescued by Dionysius, God of wine and song.  Aldington would be the first to tell you that Cecil Gray, the man who got H.D. pregnant, was a poor substitute for Dionysius, or Bacchus.  Cecil Gray wanted nothing to do with the child he had fathered.   What of Aldington’s honor?  He thought the child should be named for Gray not Aldington.  But this was not the only reason for their separation.  Aldington now had another lover who was not repelled by his pent-up ardor as H.D. had been.”  

Here we see Aldington and Arabella Yorke  

“You’ll find all of this in her poems and letters.  As it happens, Aldington and H.D. will be rescued by Artemis, personified by Winifred Ellerman, otherwise known as Bryher.   This was a modern deus ex machina, but nobody recognized it as such.   Like a God, Bryher swept in and took H.D. away from poverty, away from being Richard Aldington’s responsibility into the world of servants and children’s nurses.  Now here is Lesbia, another Ariadne abandoned by her lover, an archetype perhaps Catullus does not recognize, but Virgil will confirm some fifty years later, when he will have Aeneas abandon Dido in Carthage.”

The movie shows Catullus on a ship departing across a lake, Theseus (same actor) on a ship departing from Naxos, Aldington (same actor) once more leaving H.D. in the French hotel room to go party with Nancy Cunard.  
 
Then we see Lesbia on the lake shore watching Catullus/Theseus departures and hear H.D.’s incantation from the poem Calypso: 

“O you clouds
here is my song
man is clumsy and evil
a devil

O you sand
this is my command
drown all men in breathless suffocation
then they may understand

O you winds
beat his sails flat
shift a wave side-ways
that he suffocate
O you waves
run counter to his oars…” 

“Then, another deus ex machina, Lesbia is approached by a Dionysian-like figure, one of the illustrious Metelli family, accompanied by musicians and attendants carrying food and wine.  We soon see Lesbia and Metellus having a sensuous feast on the lake shore.  Metellus will marry Lesbia and give her the status of Roman Consul’s wife.  Aldington will write a poem about her linking her to Caesar”.


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                       2025

Friday, June 13, 2025

Ananke

A Work in Progress 
47

Episode (Trenches in WW1)

We are in a dugout.  Shells are falling overhead.  Richard Aldington is writing his love poem for H.D., Ananke, by candlelight.  We hear it being recited, interspersed by explosions and the whine of falling shells.  We hear and see images of trench warfare superimposed on images of Lesbia, meadows, streams, marshes and scented uplands, blossoms on fruit trees, bees visiting flowers.  Finally, we hear warning cries of “Gas!” and see Aldington putting on a gas mask and going up to the trench.

Ananke

In bitter sorrow and despair
I said unto my love:
‘All the far meadows, the cool marsh
And scented uplands I have searched
For blossom pleasant to the gods;
I have begged just ripened fruits
From all the pitying tree-nymphs,
Have gathered many honey-combs,
Poured wine,
Poured milk,
Poured all my words, in vain-
For yet the implacable gods
Turn their untroubled faces
Austerely from me,
Yet the cold envious wind
Whispers that no man born
Tricks the wide-open eyes of Fate’.

And seeing the pallor of her cheek,
Her fear tormented eyes and tremulous hands,
I turned aside
To check the desperate tears burning my eyes;
Then came to her again, smiling,
And kissed her lips,
Saying no word save this:
‘Do not despair’.

But yet 
I have not seen here since that day.

Richard Aldington


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                    2025

Thursday, June 12, 2025

Whatever the Weather 
       for Helen Carr

A Work in Progress
46


When Helen points out heroes from Troy’s parapet 
we’re transported by words that have weathered 
inspired by muses that knew the Achaeans
that inspired our predecessors’ poets all

Helen Carr’s book: The Verse Revolutionaries
was where Donal discovered Glenn Hughes
located in Paris in 1929 pre-crash
among the literary set gathered in Paris then

A Moveable Feast describes that time
Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
Aldington’s Death of a Hero, two novels
written in Paris were published that year

Glenn Hughes, a visiting academic with a grant
To cover expenses while researching Imagism
For his anthology Stanford University Press 
will publish in 1931 was there in Paris

his wife and child living in Aldington’s English cottage
while Aldington was attending to his affairs
with women while writing his first novel
and for a few fleeting hours re-uniting with H.D.

which she confided to Hughes in a letter 


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Songs of South London

A Work in Progress 
45

Of Esaw, Mabel, their second son Donal,
and the Street where they lived...

                       
                          1. 
                       Dawn

A path that led from a country churchyard
became a footpath over the fields
to a stile where Donal sat and watched
the sun tip up the night's dark shields

through clodded dirt he heard the footpath
resonate   thickened with composted leaves
suggesting earth's accretion
how from all things natural beauty leaves

rain divided evenly about the stile
sunlight pared through cloud
a rainbow arched above the hedge
song thrushes sang out loud.


                           2.

                         Esaw

          Esaw's a lonely old man
          who ain't dipped his end in
          to any of that honey
          for a long  long time

          He sits on the steps
          of tenement dreams
          a waif on the edge
          of an extinct happiness

          remembering how it was
          when he talked Mabel in
          to the twenties

          when men enraged
          had marched and sung
          and he was fired twice
          for fighting

          The Fusiliers took him in
           took him to India
           he brought back brass trays
           boars tusks    pictures of the Taj Mahal.

           Esaw just sits
           a soft spoken old man
           his glass eye matched to his brown

           One day in the desert at Frenchmen's Hell
           he was blown up by a mine
           and the Ministry insisted on sending him false ones
           but the eyes they sent were always the wrong color

           Remembering how it was
           when he talked Mabel on
           to his motorbike
           and they went to Box Hill

           He sits on the steps of tenement dreams
           of piano playing in Peckham pubs
           getting Mabel to give him back rubs

           No one pays him any mind
           or the men who lie
           in the gutter beside
           drunk a century ago

                        3

                    Mabel



            Mabel was a barmaid
            when Esaw first his eyes laid
            on her charms
            her face    her arms

                   eyes that ogle
                   eyes that leer
                   men in braces
                   sipping beer

             Smiling Mabel seemed to hear
             a voice proclaim her prowess
             Esaw swung around to glare
             decided it was just a dare
             (saw that William was not there)

             While his fellows discussed the track
             spilt beer on the counter started to tack
             Esaw wondered
             if he'd lost the knack

                   eyes that ogle
                   eyes that leer
                   men in braces
                   sipping beer 


             Was William with her that other night

             when Esaw was coming home by bike

             and saw him in the early light
             in Mabel's street    suspicious like

             Esaw was a working man
             when Mabel first to smile began
             at him alone    a special smile
             that lasts    and last    and lasts a man

             eyes that ogle           eyes that behold
             eyes that leer            eyes that bind
             men in braces           a man and a woman
             sipping beer              growing old and kind


                                4
                  Ballad of The Street

              This ballad spans the many years
              that Donal tramped the Street...
              listened to her many tales
              who knew so many by their feet

              A widow lived by Myatt's Fields
              in Calais Gate    off Cormont Road
              her life was bleak as week by week
              she bore a heavy load

              Three kids were left her
              when her husband died
              one could walk    two could run
              The street could tell you which one lied

              about hiding apples in a jug
              or who drank the Christmas brandy
              which one broke his mother's heart
              which one brought her candy

              They lived in roomy Calais Gate
              the best flats for miles around
              so well built that from outside
              you couldn't hear a sound

              She wished they had stayed in Brixton
              where a motor bike was class
              not found themselves amongst
              the motorized top brass

              But homes for wounded heroes
              were provided at low rent
              so Esaw and Mabel got
              a flat from heaven sent...

              Servants bells the children rang
              when they pretended to be swank
              lots of room for silver spoons
              and trees outside    not streets that stank

              Home from the wars the soldiers came
              and motor-cycles roared
              like Esaw they tuned their Nortons'
              and pretended to be Lords

              Now William owned an Anglia
              which he drove with leather gloves
              he parked it in the City
              if you please...

              In the war he'd been a warden
              patrolling Calais Gate
              keeping watch for fires on rooftops
              from next to Mabel's grate

              Now his wife patrolled in turn
              looking for her man...
              as Sergeant Esaw once looked for him
              when he heard they were holding hands

              The street had seen it coming
              seen it develop over time
              watched Esaw   Mabel   Bill   and Doris
              acting out their mime

              Poor Esaw didn't last long
              he had a stroke one New Year's Eve
              then Bill resumed his visits
              fooled the kids with makebelieve

              But Doris wasn't fooled at all
              nor were the kids for long
              she paced outside their windows in the cold...
              Then the street knew what was wrong

              The kids were growing up fast
              to Bill they didn't take too kind
              especially when Doris
              accosted them outside

              This tale went on for many years
              before the play was done...
              and the world of childish make believe
              had several lives undone

              Now that is what divorce is for
              The Street told Donal primly
              It's wrong for a man to womanize
              before his wife so openly

             Some good advice I give to you
             who live in the world of faces
             It is the type of tread a person has
             leads to such bad consequences.


                     5

      Donal Solipsist

      Damned cold
      beside the window
      he sat up in his bed
      & he said to himself
      Donal   he said
      you're getting the thin end
      of the wedge

      The moon was grey
      under the big tent
      like a one spot dab of light
      on the deserted stage
      of a darkened theatre

      Moon swimming in a mirror
      & Donal sat in bed
      thin DAMNED COLD he said
      & WHITE
      with a yellowed whiteness
      very pale thin
      swaying buds of sun against white

      he was he said
      COLD

                     6

      While Washing Windows

When Donal worked as a window cleaner
equipped with a bucket and a bag of rags
he'd work awhile then stop and ponder
the streaks on the glass that were drying fast

Window cleaning    work all poets should try
so many moments of calm to savor
visions of the innermost eye

As once when a stranger to her darkened room
he watched her brow against the pane
touch 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.

                     7

          Candles

Black night studded by streetlights
streetlights running in chains
at a window pane a forehead touched
pressed despair into the brain

Eyes tilt down the running streets
streetlights like Cavafy's candles
candles for the years passing
and in the darkness    no moon

Come let us do the arithmetic of cities
the counting of souls
male and female
with an abacus count two

A soul saved is one
a soul lost is zero
binary one and binary zero
alive is one    dead is zero

Do you hear wind chimes tinkling?
ghosts are registering the dead
the dead silenced cells in your brain
cells that dissolve in sound

"Come on love
come round the corner
come and hug me
come and squeeze me
hold me tight
on the building site

Mind that shovel
mind the puddle
come on love
let's have a cuddle

Use that mug
that white tin mug
that lies there in the pool

See    it's full of lifetime's sludge
swirl it round and read our future
aches and pains and useless drudge
oh throw it at the concrete mixer".

                    8

      Said the Street

      "You came back then
      after all you said
      about people who live here
      being common    ill bred"

Yes, I came back
Donal said,
and now I abhor
envious mean-spirited people I meet

      "You came back then
      but not to forgive
      or to be one with us
      not to live and let live"

Yes    I came back
but to visit    not stay
not to be one with you
feeling pinched every day

      "Oh Donal    dear Donal
      for me you won't fall"

Your body of rubble
and muck municipal

      "Oh Donal    darling Donal
      love your lover's lane
      your old street loves you
      lie down with her again"

He slipped into bed
eyes rimmed with red
soft his eyelids closing

watched the lamp shade
soar   then glide
its movement hypnotizing

inhaled the anesthetic air of bed
his mind swam buoyant
blood bubbling with oxygen
the ceiling like a skin
opening it pores
& breathing in


               9

Street:

Ah Donal dear, wait until you're a bit older
you'll find yourself a nice girl and settle down
you haven't been in love yet have you?
not really in love      well go get yourself
a nice girl    get married    have children

Donal:

Nah nah     wot I want is a mistress
so I can get IT regular

Street:

Ooh    that's all you think about - bleeding sex
but I never get any of it DO I...you never give ME
anything DO YOU

Donal:

Wot!  you want me to lie down   give you
a bit of finger down the drain
'ere you are then    how's that?
tickles you up a bit does it
garn you randy old bitch     get your knees up

                 10
          Pivot    

Close your eyes
take convalescense

somewhere at summer solstice
a man may stand on his shadow

courage  don't weep
though a million cells broken

the moon shines in puddles
there is water in the womb

          *

Lens swivels
world spins
world turns over
sand drops down the glass

laughing knockabout tumbledown jest
in ramshackle kitchens of ramshackle rooms
while the wind shuddered once
windows trembled

the halflife of happiness halving itself

Hurry

          *

At 9B, below footsteps in a street
in dark shadows of limitless recess
rafia matting fraying under bare feet
sitting at a table    drunk to excess
writing poetry without great success
red lamplight in the windows of a door
melancholy guitar    its strings caress
an urban wilderness    bricks for the poor


          *

Because mingled strands of our thoughts
rewound themselves to a slip knot
that lay easy

because words framed lies
cars collided in mid sentence
sounds queued up for the ear
and the ear ignored them
preferring a simpler vibration
of blood

because each day swallowed more
from the stock in the cellar
that may soon empty because of grapes
left un-plucked on the vine

because lovers made love
on creaking brass bedsteads
and by-product rubbers got thrown
into a cardboard box under the bed

rhat month may have been a record number of lies

                11
Lines: Anti-Beckett

He who propels life forward to death
moaning by day and by night
to blind tides and deaf skies
pushing a wheelchair towards us

We hide from the knowledge in his eyes
for we want life to go on forever
and the sun to be always shining
and even if it rains      
we want a rainbow


                12

          END

Stopping at the milestone
in Kent's dull dawn
looking back Donal
counted miles he had gone
no sign he had been
in those streets so long




 Richard M Russell © Dick Russell
                             2025

Monday, June 2, 2025

Glenn Hughes starts to explain

A Work in Progress 
44


While some music is heard an audience assembles at the Penthouse Theater at the University of Washington.  Thomas Campion’s My Sweetest Lesbia is a suggestion.  The Director may wish the musicians to not play this piece pretentiously but animate it with brio.

An actor will shimmer onto the stage sheathed in a bedspread which another actor will unwrap.  Both are ballet dancers.  When unwrapped the bedspread becomes a screen revealing an image like that described by Catullus in his poem about a wedding.  Only this screen will depict first the marriage of Aldington and H.D. pictured on the pavement standing outside the registry office in Kensington, London and then H.D. abandoned with her child like Ariadne on the beach of a Greek island where Dionysius (Bacchus) will come to her rescue.

The dancers wrap up the screen and exit.

Enter Glenn Hughes.  He stands next to a double bed with rumpled sheets in a hotel room near the Luxembourg Gardens, in Paris.   The room is high enough that through the window near the bed the tops of trees in a small square below can be seen.

 Babette Hughes enters through the audience.  She goes straight to the bed, feels the warmth on the sheets and looks at her husband.   

“I was wining and dining Hilda Doolittle.  (At this point, the camera will traverse to the window where Babette on stage is looking out of the window down to the square below, watching the diners on the sidewalk by the bistro).  

“Down there, we had lunch at the bistro.  Where’s Mary Anne? 

(Unexpectedly, Glenn’s young wife Babette had materialized in Paris when he thought she was living at Aldington’s cottage in England with their child).

Cut to the UW classroom in Denny Hall where Glenn Hughes taught drama classes

Glenn Hughes: “She had already written a poem entitled Eurydice, (behind him is a blackboard where Hughes has chalked a triangle and written names at the three points) and once I met her, I knew that she, herself, was the subject of the poem.   For H.D., as all poets called her, had been as much spiritually crushed by Richard Aldington, her husband, as Eurydice escaping from death had been crushed by Orpheus, almost as if she had been living in Hell.”  

We hear H.D. reciting from her poem Orchard with a tender imploring voice while we see a younger H.D. and Aldington alone in a cherry orchard: 

“O rough hewn god of the orchard
I bring you an offering…
these fallen hazel-nuts
stripped late of their green sheaths
grapes, red purple
their berries dripping with wine…
I bring you as offering.”  

Then we hear H.D. reciting, as if about to pronounce a curse, from her poem Envy, while we see a young soldier just back from duty in France and desperate with battle rage violently copulating with his wife:  

“I envy you your chance of death, how I envy you this…though you clasp me in an embrace that is set against my will, and rack me with your measure, effortless yet full of strength, and slay me…” 

“She had then been abandoned by Aldington, who wanted a life of promiscuity, not responsibility.”  Here we see H.D. with a baby and Aldington walking away.  He hesitates, turns back and looks at her, then goes on his way.  H.D. is reciting from her poem Eurydice: 

“…why did you turn back…? why did you turn?  why did you glance back?  why did you hesitate for that moment?  why did you bend your face caught with the flame of the upper earth above my face?”

Next Episode (Historic Denny Hall)
We now see Glenn Hughes giving a lecture.  

“I was working on getting to know those Imagist poets I’d come in search of.  We had crossed the Atlantic by ocean liner in order to meet, among others, H.D., Ezra Pound, and Richard Aldington.   They were all to be found there in 1929 in the year of the Great Crash on Wall Street.  It was May 1929.  The crash was still months away.   H.D. was a married woman, although she lived mostly in Switzerland with a long-time lesbian lover and a series of male lovers.  Besides Eurydice she reminded me of Lesbia.  Lesbia, as the great Roman poet Catullus described her, was bold and vivacious.  You could also see that in H.D. if you got on her wavelength.  She liked to look fragile to the outside world, but inside she was sparkling with joy.   She was like Calypso once you had entered her sacred space.  You could never leave until she let you go.  H.D.’s husband, like Catullus, who wrote about Lesbia in the time of the First Triumvirate, was a poet.  But H.D. and Aldington, had been separated for 10 years.  He was in Paris too, a big bluff fellow, carrying on a very public friendship with Nancy Cunard while Nancy Cunard conducted her own affair with an American jazz musician.   Who was Lesbia?  A gentleman never tells!  But you will have already guessed, because you’ve accessed the syllabus, that she tormented Catullus.  And it was easy for me to see that the story of Lesbia and Catullus might not be so different than that of H.D. and Aldington.”  

Babette Hughes has left the stage and Lesbia enters, dressed as a high-born Roman woman of the time of Catullus.  She has two slaves with her and commands them to show her the next coverlet on the bed.  It depicts two lovers kissing by a lake shore while some old men look on.

Next Episode (Lake Garda and Paris)
A Roman Villa on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy where Catullus is reciting a bitter poem written on a scroll to Lesbia, who is kissed in public while elders pass by with disapproving stares.   

“I had long thought that Lesbia and Catullus were a Roman version of the great Greek poets Sappho and Alcaeus.  Now, I realized H.D., and Aldington were interchangeable with them, just as Sappho could have been with H.D. and Aldington, Alcaeus.  The two modern poets, H.D. and Aldington, had been married just before World War 1.  They lost their own child when it was still born.  This was in May 1915, a week or so after the Germans brought America into the war by torpedoing a passenger ship, Lusitania, causing immense death.  They separated soon thereafter.  She'd had a child by another man.  She could not bear the man Aldington had become as a result of fighting the Germans in France.  It was as if he was French-poxed by trench warfare.  

H.D. and Aldington were two poets in a series that began with Eurydice and Orpheus.  In all of them the men abandoned their women.  But the modern poets were destined to meet again in Paris.”  

We now see Glenn and Babette above the Parisian square  watching Richard Aldington and H.D. (the same actors as Catullus and Lesbia) having an intimate meal below.   Their hands touch on the table.  They rise and walk across the square beneath the trees and enter the hotel.  Glenn and Babette are seen hiding in the stairway when Aldington and H.D. pause to kiss in the doorway before entering the bedroom.


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025

Wednesday, May 21, 2025

In Mid-May


Scents of lilac colors of columbine lavender purple 
beside a path strewn with cedar chips sun bleached
between rhododendrons some already bloomed

Fresh white blossoms beneath an early flowering bush
shriveled red blossoms near another like blood 
while multi-hued buds unfurl on an even later bush

Lush lemon-size green buds unfurling gold sheaths
enclosing gorgeous, upturned kiss-pursed red lips
becoming melon-size many stalked blossoms basking in the sun

Persimmon leaves are paler green than the walnut tree
rhododendron leaves another shade of green
holly leaves are dark with endpoint imagery 

A fountain where fortune grants free wishes
which free range crows with no saliva needing water 
pollute with peanut shells


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                         2025

Saturday, May 17, 2025

What Happens in the End

A Work in Progress
43

Just an inch a year 
the ocean creeps
higher and higher and higher
we don’t mind
just as long as we get
higher and higher and higher

tariffs bite
prices rise
higher and higher and higher
we don’t mind
it makes us get
higher and higher 

it’s what we do
while rich guys rise
higher and higher and higher
we’ll get poorer
but we don’t care
getting higher and higher and higher

until we’re broke
we’ll just get 
higher and higher and higher
we’ll be homeless 
destitute
driven higher and higher and higher

we still have hope
King Trump’s rising
higher and higher and higher
he now owns space
we can see him
disappearing

going higher and higher and higher

and when he’s gone
we’ll be glad

to have him as a memory
fading out of sight as memories do
traveling far out in space

going higher and higher and higher


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025

Thursday, May 15, 2025

 Donal's Early Career

A Work in Progress 
42

When I was sixteen, in 1960, I l went to work at Burroughs Wellcome's chemical research laboratories in Beckenham, Kent, England where I was a lab assistant.  They gave a day off a week for continued education.  On those days, that I didn't take the train, I would ride my bicycle from Camberwell to Beckenham to Norwood two afternoons a week to attend Norwood Technical College. I'd then ride home to Camberwell.  About 20 miles all told through London traffic.

My favored route by bicycle to Beckenham took me on a private road past Dulwich College, a private school for boys with a noted art gallery and an accomplished list of former pupils including P. G. Wodehouse. On non-college days my route home took me down steep Sydenham Hill where a traffic light waited at an intersection with a main road at its foot.  I rode a fixed-wheel bike and kept up with the busy motor traffic going downhill to stop at the light.

I had started to think of being a writer and I saw a job listed in the newspaper that would mean living in a village in Kent, as an assistant to an author. I sent a letter to apply listing my current employer.  Perhaps he had looked up the Burroughs Wellcome number in the directory as I was very surprised to be summoned to the phone. This phone, in the age of landlines, did not ring in the lab where I worked but in the administrator's office.  I was embarrassed to take the call and have a short uncomfortable-to-speak freely interview with the author in front of three women secretaries.  It might have been H. E. Bates.  I wasn't offered the job, but I kept looking.

Geraldine was the young woman who summoned me to the phone.  I was far too shy to approach her but she was my age and I thought attractive.  There were two other young women in the admin office besides Geraldine.  They would mingle with the young lab assistants as we queued for our weekly pay packets. 
Those who were not salaried staff were paid on Fridays when at lunchtime we would line up to receive our pay packets which in my case was four pounds, some shillings and pence.  We were paid in cash.

The girls from the admin office were among those who assembled.  Christine, Valerie who later became engaged to Roger, and Geraldine.   Christine, a tall girl, wore a short tight miniskirt to work one Friday when we were waiting to be paid.  Roger slapped her hard on the bottom while we were standing in line.  He was that sort of person.  He later complained, a few days later, that on copulating with Christine on the carpet in the back of his van she wasn’t even wet.

Just as at school, William Penn Comprehensive School, now long defunct, my older brother had preceded me working at Burroughs Wellcome.  He was in his third year there and getting ready to leave and go to University with a grant that provided enough money a student could live cheaply.  He had studied for the needed A level certificates while taking the day release I also enjoyed.

Organic chemistry was not for me.  One day, carelessly, while manipulating some chemicals in a fume cupboard for an experiment, I managed to drip some drops of a lachrymator, stuff that makes you cry, onto one of my shoes.  Not long afterwards, I walked over to the dining hall to pick up a tray and get some lunch. As I walked down an aisle between lunch room tables I did not notice people hurriedly rising from their seats and exiting the building.  It was a warm day and the evaporating drops on my shoe were wafting behind me as I walked.  It was powerful stuff.  

I got another job as a lab technician at Whitbread's Chiswell Street brewery in the City of London.  This was a job where I could walk to The Oval underground station to take a train to work.  The brewery had cellars that dated back to Shakepearian times.  The Lord Mayor of London's ceremonial coach was kept at the brewery behind a glass wall in a temperature controlled room.  The brewery which used the drop method of fermentation was several stories high, one of the higher buildings at the time, a film had been made from the roof of the fires in the City of London one night when London was heavily bombed by German aircraft in World War II.

At first my job involved running an experimental brewery.  The chemistry of fermentation was not then, and probably is still not fully understood.  The problem to be solved was head retention.  A phrase that elicited laughter when I used it in America.  Whitbread's problem was that their renowned bitter beer did not have such a big foamy head as Watney's carbonated beers.  What could be done by varying the ingredients that go into beer to get a better head on the beer, one that would last longer and not dwindle quickly as it currently did.

My project was to run the glass brewery which had been constructed to try out various recipes.  It modeled the real brewery and descended two floors with a metal staircase around it.  I wore a white coat as one of the professional staff.  I might have been 18.  Most of the work in the glass brewery was done by a young fellow wearing a brown coat who had been brewing beer long before I arrived to take charge.  Together we mashed in and made second runnings varying the recipe and doing the best we could to provide some good samples to the senior brewers who conducted tastings.  

Using the privilege of my white coat, I sometimes wandered the old brick brewery, passing by the big wooden vats of beer on various levels, descending staircases that went by the stately board room where the Director's met down to the cellars where cobbled streets possibly dating from Shakespearian times were still visible among the storage tanks.

 At school, I'd enjoyed acting in school plays and the brewery had a drama club that put on plays it staged before audiences at a nearby theatre near the Aldersgate station.  Rehearsals were held in the evening and through the cast members I first encountered literary London.  Our manager's secretary in the new computer programing department, Mary Adams was also one of the cast and she shared a flat with Maggie Clews, an announcer for the BBC World Service radio programs.  They were friends with actors such as Tom Bell and poets such as Peter Porter. Mary would sometimes invite them to meet her after rehearsals in the private brewery bar.  On one occasion after some jovial imbibing in the bar Tom Bell made off with a bunch of daffodils from the window boxes that lined Chiswell Street, presenting them to Mary as a bouquet.  And So To Bed, was one of the plays the drama club put on.  Another was HayFever, for which I got good reviews for my part from Mary's claque in the audience.

Most of my free time was spent studying for the English "A" level exams I needed to pass in order to apply to a university college.  One of my teachers had suggested I become a journalist when I left school but I hadn't heeded that advice.  I was intent on getting a degree in the sciences.

My story is one of continuing education.  As the story goes, Whitbread management realized that it could no longer hire staff to work as clerks with quill pens now that computers were coming into fashion.  So, aptitude tests were passed around and after taking one I was selected to go to an IBM training school to learn how to be a computer programmer.  A computer room with a raised floor was being prepared to house the IBM 1440 computer that had been ordered.  It was being built in a basement approached by descending a staircase that otherwise led up to Colonel Whitbread's private accommodation in a private wing.   A refrigerator and supplies of bottled beer were kept adjacent to the cool air-conditioned computer room.  We sometimes encountered the Colonels's butler entering the building from the courtyard.

Now a trained programmer, I was sent to work at Stowells of Chelsea, part of the Whitbread Group, whose distribution center for the wines they sold to restaurants, clubs, wine bars and off-licenses was just off the King's Road.

At Stowell's, I met Bill Sowerby, who taught me to how to properly answer the phone: Russell, speaking, not Mr. Russell.  A well tailored management trainee, he seemed to mostly be a liaison between the new team of ex-IBMers that Whitbread had hired to manage the computer project and Whitbread's old-school management led by the Colonel, who had led his own paratroop regiment in the recent war and who regularly entertained the Queen Mother at the Brewery as well as organized horse racing at Cheltenham.

At Stowells of Chelsea I became acquainted with punched cards.  Besides their use for collecting information, they fit very well into the inside pocket of a jacket and it was the custom in those days to always carry a few in your pocket ready to pull out and write notes on while at the pub, say.

Punched cards are paper cards which when punched with holes encoded eighty columns of alphanumeric information a tabulator could read.  I worked on my own at night running boxes of punched cards through a sorter.  Each card represented a transaction.  Then, I ran the sorted cards through the tabulator to print a report organized by customer.  I was warned not to let my tie get caught in the tabulator which read cards at high speed.

Jim Lewis was the manager who had set up the punched card system at Stowells that was due to be replaced by the incoming computer at Whitbread.  The Whitbread Group encompassed many breweries throughout England and Jim would soon move on from Stowells to a brewery in the Shires to be the data processing manager.  In the meantime, he was keeping things running during the day managing the young women who punched up the cards from the invoices sent and payments received.  The tabulator was programmed with wires plugged into a board, much like an old telephone exchange that had many holes in front of an operator to select.  Jim had programmed these boards to produce needed reports.  Stowells was a profitable subsidiary with higher margins on its products than beer.  Eventually, some decades later Whitbread would sell off its beer business to concentrate on restaurants and hotels.

The first computer program I was assigned to write was a make-work project given to me by my manager, Michael Russell, no relation.  He had been recruited by John Dunbar, his senior, also his former colleague at IBM.  It was a bell ringing program where eight imaginary hand bells would play a tune directed by the program.

The last program I wrote was to make mulitple Cray-1 vector register instructions chime.  That was after I had quit programming to write full-time and then returned to programming several years later in order to make a living having achieved success as a poet at the expense of becoming somewhat destitute.  

A learning experience.


Dick Russell (C) Richard M Russell
                     2025

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Ode to the Chicken House
         For Gina Dearden

A Work in Progress
41


There was a structure called the chicken house
well-lit maybe once a Nissen hut where she worked
nearby a caravan where an overflow guest could sleep
a quince tree in a paddock where geese flocks cackled

a dry floored shed where fruit was left to season
on spread out sheets of newsprint from The Times
a woodshed with ample split firewood for the winter
an axe and a chopping block all kept dry

her room in the big house and access to an Aga
a fridge and a wooden table where actors would sit
and chat before leaving for the Southampton Rep 
coming home later to make cocoa before turning in

her heart was inside her studio where all seemed faraway
as she mixed colors made etchings always new things

nearby ponies traveled New Forest paths, private places
in a time when many young Americans travelled abroad
some had served in Vietnam others reluctant awaited fate
four dead students had already fallen for their cause

peachie le nic was one of those a hungry New Yorker
raiding the fridge for chicken wings scooping it all in
a Columbia journalism school grad with portable typewriter 
set with an italic font to imprint onion skin paper

artists, actors, exhibitions together in the chicken house
when the sixties hit ten and the seventies began
when we were all very young when we all felt free 
in the first act of an epic we’d all been cast in

her sketchbook cover was decorated with color
Its zeit geist design still etched in my mind


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                       2025

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

What Those Words May Have Said

A Work in Progress
40


Before they fell like flakes from sculpted stone
words repeatedly hammered and chiseled away 
there’s no detritus at Donal’s feet no substance
no scrap paper in a basket or on the floor
nothing to slip and slide on perhaps to fall
felled by a knock-on effect from ambiguity
a moment when the gripped chisel slips
and un-erased evidence remains

a bust of a President’s head
front lobe exposed
dementia more apparent 
ego expanding beyond all limits 
avarice unchecked
ugh…do not look, do not see, it’s far too ugly


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                   2025






Friday, May 2, 2025

Clean Coal



they’re carrying clean coal to China
those filthy train cars passing by
once bright green in company colors
now overcoated with coal dust mixed with grime
pollens and pollutants

clean burning coal from Wyoming’s open skies
to brighten China’s murk and gloom
by trains on Burlington Northern’s tracks
as far as Canada’s coal port
a highly automated process

dirty old coal train
we know who owns you
though he stays faraway in Omaha
where the fields are green
and deer roam free



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                    2025

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Remembering the Nixon Era

A Work in Progress 
39


So Donal typed this poem up and sent it by U.S. Post
to the Editors of the Workshop Press in faraway U.K.
and soon became a published poet

It was 1970 and he was living in a country 
where four students were killed at Kent State
shot by the National Guard
for protesting the Vietnam War

America, USA

your buttons splay 
rising like antlers of gazelle
your coat dark
like shadow land of jungle

your buttons epitomize furtive deer
your club   impact of a summer without rain

a sidewalk canopy
of a boarded-up store
offers you shade

a shadow 
moving over the rim of sight
distorts your mirage

one hawkish eye
its lid stitched back
watches...
vulnerable to an irritant fly

Oh America
the surgeons removed your tear ducts
you are unable to cry



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Donal Got a Job

A Work in Progress
38


So, Donal auditioned got a job in New York.
Bruce Choppin was there, John Hall

The Who performed Tommy at The Filmore East
when Donal lived in Northumberland
at Roughside Bruce visited with Rachel
only a few did that

It was 1969
Gilbert Peaker got mugged on Morningside Heights
having flown to New York from the Lake District
and the Fast Fourier Transform man
John Tukey lay with a bad back
across desks at an IEA (UNESCO) meeting
Forrest Baskett was there from Stanford
Bruce brought together mathematicians     
    statisticians     
           computer scientists 
      Donal 
                            a poet in machine language 
                                    for a mighty
                     machine
               IBM’s 360/91

Forrest said Assembly Language was too low level
impractical for IEA 

                                instead
he would choose FORTRAN
to write programs that involved scoring exam results
of multiple-choice questions marked on cards pre-punched
with the codes for country school and student
collected from all the countries participating in the study
to measure educational attainment at various ages
and that was wise advice from a Silicon Valley savant

but Donal wrote the programs in Assembler anyway
he didn’t know Fortran and there was one particular
subroutine he wrote in Assembler in Sweden 
working with Britt at the Karolinska Institute
where they read all the cards into a special machine
that invoked an Execute instruction that proved useful
Britt said in a postcard later


    Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                       2025

To the Imagination

A Work in Progress 

37


with Respect to Cole Porter

I’ll not try to say the unsayable
express the inexpressible
write those last few syllables
that clicks it all in place

that thing that memorable measurable thing
that’s inexpressible
that’s unsayable about you

I’ll not try to say that you’re beautiful
overstate the understated you
extol all your good qualities
that made me fall in love

you’re more beautiful each time I see you
I’ll try to find words that will portray you
as you are in present moment
exemplifying truth

but every time I think of him
masquerading as a king
his shadow stands between us and the sun
casts a poor light for lettering

painting in that thing that memorable thing
that’s inexpressible
that’s unsayable about you




Dick Russell © Richard M. Russell
                    2025


Rage

A Work in Progress
36


The arc of this work in progress began pre-war 
that first World War with archetypal couples
Aldington and H.D. Ariadne and Bacchus/Dionysius
curved to include Catullus and Lesbia
passed a milestone, Ezra’s death
then found itself a century later poised
on the brink of a third world war
brought on when Empires collide

Rage
of bloodied gums
of teeth wrenched out
though you reduce them to soft muzzles
no different from your dogs
the pent-up fury of history prepares
a sweeter kiss, prepares a permissive caress
an ejaculated moment

& vaster is the emptiness of the soul without boundaries
more unanswerable those questions Helen strip-teased him with 

*

Hero leading a crowd
his banner thrust forward
his pose: bare forearmed
self-conscious

so, heroes strain forward
held back by vanity
a momentary failing
that painters cannot color in

*

the abacus was broken           lay on a building site
its once bright words bent & rusty
while the taxman counted souls on a computer
binary one & binary zero
Donal sat on a bollard with a morse key between his thighs
tapped out three dashes, three dots, three dashes, three dots
the abacus was broken
beads fell from its wire
three red ones three blue ones
each fell from the wire
came to rest
equilibrium



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                         2025



Saturday, April 19, 2025

Ezra’s Dead

A Work in Progress
35


in a library aisle 
scrolls newly added…

“May I, for my own self, song’s truth reckon…”

from Philadelphia he’d traveled to Venice 
then to London Imperial center of Empire 
to found a new school like Apollonius Rhodius
writing SeaFarer in Alexandria

Ezra peered at a vaporetto’s wake 
                                  intent on its scrollable steep incline
rolling itself up to slap him awake
         silhouetted by Guidecca’s skyline 
                          standing still on a stone wall splashed by waves
                                 stopped along Fondamenta Zattere
watching how light with water misbehaves
           reflecting Redentore’s dome that day

                           Out for an ice cream one bright October
he sat outside an ice cream shop
oblivious of all in sunlight silent
while Ginsberg solaced his sins
heeding lyre playing Orpheus well
Eurydice wailing that life is hell

that scroll snapped shut

Ah Tony, you would have done better elsewhere
with better material 
nobody ever noticed those doors on bronze pivots
opening to let English go where it now resides
when it isn’t in Italy
where spaghetti 
shot from six guns
conquered Hollywood’s great
Ah Tony you would have done great in Milan
with design done by gifted Etruscans
you could have gone to France to see Merwin
Newcastle might have been more fit
going further north into deeper warmth
there is Edinburgh
Paris of the North


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                   2025

Then

A Work in Progress
34


Basil Bunting was in Northumberland
Samuel Beckett in Paris
William Burroughs in London
Ezra Pound was dead

and according to peachie, burroughs told him:
words are chemicals
& effective words are those that impinge
on the consciousness 
and are reinforced 
by
a rich mind reagent

just words alone
as dangerous as LSD 
creating fantasies
just like AI
                          
the sea spat stones onto the beach
on the night of storm sand girdled the stones
stones lay

day        night
                        traversed by stars

         the land
         recumbent
        nude
        drowning

songs of silence breaking on beaches
polyps coral world
from the mountain
views of the sea
storm of spume & white water
song of noiseless silence
deep in your depths

(
&
in the morning
high snow topped the sierras
gleaming day of mules
pine trails wands of bamboo
oxen & horses
bells jingling
hooves 
on the beach

wound & woven
safe kept in softness
there
& there
there
)

kelp    tow    pebble    strand
gull        urchin               anemone

fretful follows the sea



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025


Fragments of Papyrus

A Work in Progress
33


Those times too few…

I’ll write them as I think they would have been
when Kalliope’s primal scream
awoke her sisters 
sensing her son in torment
torn apart by impassioned women
urged on by Aphrodite

riddle me riddle
arm in arm jauntily
Dionysius and Ariadne
kicked a tin can along the pavement enjoying the noise 
they felt like making

peachie le nic has been cast in this play 
his wife Claire as Ariadne 
jilted by Jason
now making merry with this half-pint
who met her in a pub off the Edgware Road
where a younger crowd hung out

to me
pass
to me again
goal 
beautiful goal
    & the cow jumped over the moon
                                                           tra la
cut the wires of the abacus
twang

they looked at each other as if to say
where are we going?
In life?

he emptied his bladder against a wall
his bladder throbbing with grateful release
as arcs of steaming piss traversed the night air
a window opened
a policeman
a fine wall to piss against

let the piss spurt urgently like rampant garden hose
irrigation of brickworks
amidst the concrete and the choking weeds a pale flower slowly died
piss piss
gave back to the ground its debt of life
splashier piss
take aim at the window
alas, not enough pressure head left in the bladder
dying gurgle of fountains
turn the cocks off
zip

*

Tony Selina dropped by 9B Cabbell Street once 
when the nights were drawing in
we were hanging out in the kitchen
peachie was there
Claire making tea 
we were smoking and chatting
                      Charlie Waite    Jessica too
              Bob Ellis passed round a joint
Val waved it past after one quick drag
                        David Horne took her share
Sen was there also Yvonne

Tony Selina said
the sound of water heating in a kettle 
                              was what he looked forward to 
                  when he came home
        and Bob looked up from rolling another joint
                                said he’d been having tea that same afternoon 
with the Beatles talking about going on tour 
                    to take photos and over mugs of tea
                                    in a simple sandwich place
it was all very normal 
he said

                      &
Claire 
          brought Tony a cup of tea
  and Tony stayed awhile
            because she made a second pot
but then he had to go
                    he was unrequited in love then

Tony said Roughside was too remote
impractical for him                              
he chose to live at Robin Hood’s Bay
instead

at that table
every evening 
in the kitchen
seemed a feast



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                                          2025
  

Friday, April 18, 2025

Hope 


Our Swainson’s thrush singing in the woods
A free bird unheard by those enslaved by headsets

Words erect meaning without benefit of mortar
no need to mix water, cement and lime
stories emerge turn to myth over time
transform, fragment, mother becomes daughter
father becomes son tragedy laughter
stories repeating over and over

dry-stone walls won’t crumble will outlast
masons that built them won’t become rubble
unlike words on paper or papyrus
physical media known to decay
digital media it’s here today
tomorrow who knows what will be outcast

So shall I speak of a world without wheely bins 
where wooden ships once sailed
where honor was most of the law
beliefs in only in what you saw
for the world was a mythic place
of witches, warriors, tyrant kings
where pottery was precious
there were no disposable things
just half lemon rind spoons impaled on twigs

except masonry there is no trace
but words describe it


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                         2025

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Mathematics & Metaphor



Consider the magic of numbers
how they multiply and divide
clothed in symbols

Consider 
nine times nine
and know my age

Consider the sinuous shape of an integral sign
inferencing meaning from ambiguity
metaphor making magic

a digital twin that can 
be imagined
or re-imagined as a woven sheet

where nodes are interconnected
like so many cobwebs on a hedge
in the morning dew

Consider the wisdom of an integral
a value of all that you have known
perhaps St. Peter checks

Consider a thicket of dark spiked holly
green thick with red berries
then feel its pricks

as you push past its leaves
on an overgrown path that leads to a gate
that opens to poetry



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                   202

The Garden of the Golden Valley

By Tu Mu, Tang Dynasty



Prosperity
          lavishness
like scent 
         just gone

Water runs on
grass grows each spring
in the evening breeze
birdsong sounds sad

Falling petals
a fallen beauty
once wrinkled
one’s gone



translated by David Sen and Dick Russell
Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                       2025 


Saturday, April 12, 2025

Of A Fallen Flower

By Chang Hu, T’ang Dynasty


A full moon is shining
through the branches of a tree
in the palace courtyard

she sits staring 
at a bird on its nest
her eyes shining

she slides out the long comb
that held her hair rolled
to keep a moth away from her lamp

but who will save her from despair?



Translated by David Sen and Dick Russell
Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025

Upon the Tower at Yu Chou

By Chen Tzu-Ang



Heaven and Earth are separate
I cannot see great principled leaders past or unborn
Viewing a vast landscape from up high
Confronted by loneliness and dew falling from the sky


Translated by David Sen & Dick Russell

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                         2025

Thursday, April 10, 2025

For Michael March
1947 - 2025

A Work in Progress
32

(better known to Donal as peachie le nic) 

                                                
a flagstone path    moss in places     lichen
well made for constant traversal beside our home
ten wheelbarrow loads to the herb garden
three beds replenished with black wormy loam
down the slope of the hill to the dogwood tree
where the path steepens and forks three ways
takes you near, far, and faraway from thee
into other domains each wilder, may
you safely return who go that way now
there’s work to be done out on the border
or, if you venture without knowing how
into tangled tumbledown disorder
outside the gate on our property’s edge
beyond the prickles of our holly hedge




Dick Russell
Copyright © February 18, 2020



Sunday, April 6, 2025

Thinking of a Dear Friend

By Chang Chi, Tang Dynasty


Last year
you led your soldiers out from the city
I watched for your return
but you did not come

there has been no news of the campaign
you just vanished
beyond the walls

I was going to commemorate you in the temple
but I can’t believe you are dead

I know so little
less even than your horse
he may now honor your standard
he may now graze by your crumpled tent

we will be apart forever
like life and death

what can I do?

except grieve for you
wrench my gaze from the far sky



Translated by David Sen, Dick Russell
 Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                          2025

Friday, April 4, 2025

A Blank White Page - for Pierre Joris (1947-2025)

A Work in Progress
31


A blank page invites written words to bring
purpose to the page next to each other
ruled lines park words where they’re easily found
by the eye or by fingers if embossed
braille on stiff paper touched by fingertips
either way by sight or by touch words matter

A blank page invites written words that won’t
disappear so try your best choose wisely 
knowing words scanned by AI for sentiment
may incur an unfavorable weighting
if read from a certain perspective
intolerant of other perspectives

A blank page invites words that profess
love puts value on forms of expression
value puts price on some product or service
that resist that disdain that drool a trail
like a snail headed up the windowpane
for no reason than to rise always words rise


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025

Monday, March 31, 2025

Leah’s Trunk

A Work in Progress
30


Cord wood split and stacked while green
in May while waiting for news from town
Leah’s hair tied up in a yellow scarf
the color of fresh hewn alder

wood smoke scenting sunlight
sunlight ageing alder
finches perched on thistles
spreading thistledown

Donal was advised to avoid green suits
in business if you want to make them buy
dress for success with dark suit and tie
don’t wear clothes from which buyers will shy

northern harriers hunting a marsh
redwing blackbirds nesting in cattails
cutthroat trout in the shallow stream
a kingfisher by the pond near the beach

longer days warmer weather
emergent bumble bees
daffodils hyacinths
house finches warbling

well-seasoned wood
a year quickly past
Leah’s cabin now vacant
Still no news from town

We bought a trunk from Leah
for she was traveling light
leaving to live with an artist
down the coast and out of state

a capacious blue trunk
for toys and winter clothes
a platform for a doll’s house
for tea parties for scones

then came news that Boeing would buy
a seven-million-dollar list price deal 
for a Cray Research Cray-1
with full commission being quite a sum

wood smoke scenting sunlight
sunlight ageing alder
finches perched on thistles
spreading thistledown

after a dry spell it rained
plants that weathered well thrived
sudden growth seemed obvious
as if Persephone unbuttoned her blouse


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                     2025

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Origins

A Work in Progress
29


I’ll close my eyes on a rainy day and choose a sun drenched cricket field edged by shade trees where leather meets willow and there’s watercress not far and a brook where a nymph lives that should a cricketer come in search of a hard hit ball he might spy it at the bottom of a deep pool that should he reach in to grasp would be too far for an arm to reach and she’d soon have him in her grasp

While fronds ripple in the splash

And find young Donal on his little bike riding pell-mell into the park through the wrought iron gates to fling himself down on the grass inside and hide behind his bike from the police car stopped outside the gates he’d just whizzed in front of risking scratch of paint

Sing to me muse as once you sang 
tell of Penelope in a nightie telling her son
he never slept, Odysseus, he never slept
with pajama bottoms on

So, Donal’s mother told him one day his father slept
but he had died. He felt unhugged afraid of touch 
flinching from contact with her skin
his mother's love had not outlasted him



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                     2025

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Where Walt Whitman Walked

A Work in Progress
28


So Donal came to stand on land where Whitman may have walked
where he and Jean Bartik sometimes walked and talked
by the Cooper River across the street from where Donal worked
as Editor: Standard Electronic Data Processing
in time to see how it all began with those
who were programmers, coders

Donal carpooled with Jean
one of ENIAC’s team of programmers
all of them women 
Americans working with male engineers
She, Jean Bartik nee Betty Jean Jennings was an Editor 
at Auerbach Publishers across the river from Philadelphia
in Pennsauken, New Jersey beyond Camden
by the Cooper River 

And ENIAC claimed being first
And once upon a time the Cray-1 was undoubtedly the fastest
built by wirers, all of them women
Americans working with male engineers

So Donal learned to write for money
Auerbach Reports on mainframe computers
got to see how it was done
emergent from an archive of previous work
Cray’s short vector machine 
the world’s fastest computer by far

And Donal got a job at Cray Research, Inc.
and was there to witness Seymour himself
on a Saturday at the punch card machine
at the Halle Lab in Chippewa Falls
and in time got a transcript of his recorded talk
explaining a tool which measured nanoseconds 
in short strides of wire
delay lines running back and forth across the board
synchronizing signals
interconnecting simple electronic parts
obtained from Fairchild and Motorola
to mathematicians
famous at wrangling data breaking codes
there in the puzzle palace where a red flight flashed
when Donal went down to the basement where a multitude
of computers were arrayed



Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                    2025

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Glenn Hughes Began Another Screenplay

A Work in Progress
27


Let’s assume that by 1958 Glenn Hughes had read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, published in 1951, 52, and 53.  From this came his idea for another screenplay where an older building on the campus of the University of Washington was the hub of a secret in plain sight, another type of Second Foundation dedicated to the survival of the human species.  A place where scholars kept in touch with ancient texts and philosophers, a place of great learning and patient understanding, a place where civilization would be saved when…

Donal sat on the steps of Denny Hall and sang while playing his guitar...

When you’ve been trumped, you cannot play for time
for your cards have been moved to another’s
you must wait then ante up and play once again
while you stay at the table with your brothers

When you’ve been trumped you must play a long game
For time’s on your side as all things decline
Before he can fail, he must first succeed
Posturing dominance vulpine lupine

Cast in crypto-gold to look like Caesar
Acting as if there’s no law can bind him
He’s going to say something outrageous each day
Sometimes led on by his keepers sometimes at whim

When you’ve been trumped watch out for madmen
Crazed with power and enabling a king
Trading votes in order to pay homage at court
Unable to see their king’s gone ding-a-ling

When you’ve been trumped it’s just a defeat
Victory comes when voters cast ballots
Having seen the mad king and his court at work
Next year the country will cast out some bigots

When you’ve been trumped you must play a long game
For time’s on your side as all things decline
Before he can fail, he must first succeed
Posturing dominance vulpine lupine


Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                   2025

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Dunkirk 

June 1st, 1940

A Work in Progress 26


At dawn the last men of the rearguard got to the beach
There were no boats waiting to take them off
So, they trudged miles towards Dunkirk
While Messerschmidt’s strafed in daylight
finding a rowboat, they dragged to the shore 
floated out to sea
where a sloop picked them up 
Donal's father said he came back on a sailboat

  
Dick Russell © Richard M Russell
                        2025


The party “included personnel from the 1st Battalion, The South Lancashire Regiment, the 6th Battalion The Black Watch and Brigade Headquarters personnel, as well as Fusiliers.  The party marched to Dunkirk, where a rowing boat was found and towed into the water.  Eventually the party was picked up by a sloop which, although twice hit by bombs, eventually reached Dover”.

A Short History of the 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers City of London Regiment during the first year of the war.  Published by The Naval & Military Press.





Glenn Hughes Develops his Theme A Work in Progress 48 We see Glenn Hughes teaching a small class in Denny Hall in the 1930s.  Gone are multi...