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

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

 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Once One Spring

Outside on the driveway inside my fence 

looking at purple irises, yellow daffodils, jonquils

a palette of colors to please the eye

four tall cedars over all snagging morning sun

low in the sky standing stationary 

awake and aware life is just a slice through time

a flurry big enough to leave a wake astern

of memorable moments I’d like to describe

if one can imagine a breeze moving fuchsias

long stemmed that sway shiver sometimes shake 

or the sound of a shovel as it scrapes

magical moments alone with nature

when things move in rhythm with a flute faraway 

far from the din of battle. Harkaway

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                    2025

Try Again

A Work in Progress
25

Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.

Heeding these words

Donal got up on his feet

Found his voice 

To those adrift in troubled times

Now in these times of strife

famines follow disasters

lands unploughed and wasted

our inheritance goes empty

brothers   sisters   are drifting

going east going west

while this war continues 

they cannot meet   or

direct their steps home

where doors bang in the wind

gardens lie ruined

they are my flesh and blood

yet they drift down strange roads

dragging their lonely shadows

through far countries

unable to lean on a friend

like a solitary bird

blown thousands of miles

like uprooted grass

scattered in the wind

I am alone

cut off from home

now we all look up at the moon

in five different places

the same thought clouds our eyes

and we weep

Po-Chu-Yi

T'ang Dynasty

translated by David Sen, Dick Russell

© 2025

Feasting

Nutrient enriched

hot blood scouring a warm heart

oiling an engine

cleansing for winter

preparing tough arteries 

lean months meagre meals 

feasting in springtime

sun rising before seven

hardened hearts relax

snowdrops crocuses

at first one daffodil bloomed

now many blossom

carrots potatoes

simmering in a pot roast

early afternoon

winter sun rising

low in the sky having climbed

above the tree line

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                    202

Seeing You Raga

like you I know of sonnet rules of rhyme

but now I make these sonnets as I please

hoping fragments of them may yet survive

transmission through what goes beyond

that cloud of information beyond that plug 

that has its own heartbeat if it has one

going beyond the confines of our earth

out into space rippling on for light years

into our star system towards unknowns

knowing that others will read what I send

and they have a duty to comprehend

my meaning in case I’ve encrypted sense

in case I’m writing to those that rebel

who turn my nonsense into words that gel

when some readers stiffen with keen intent

it is my duty to enliven life

for I am an un-jammed radio ham

getting a message out that all is well

I can say no more gentlemen don’t tell

I can say much more but under duress

under inquisition and in distress

but that beautiful blue globe seen from space

has refugee migrations south to north

east to west crossing by land and by sea

changing direction where fences are built

adapting as species must to survive 

when threatened by what is unspeakable

driven by fears incomprehensible

twenty-four bars of a raga I play

using all strings of a well tuned sitar

only in my mind my fingers won’t work

for intricate chord changes delicate

phrases restating questions never asked

my fingers less nimble my timing off

discordant thoughts tumbling out of sequence

wailing sitar pounding tabla on stage

where if I could play but only in my mind

because I cannot play sitar I can

pluck a good string and perhaps even improvise 

what I’m needing what I’m pleading

what would be understood were meaning clear

what would propel forward if in first gear

then 

      there and then when

        coexistence twined

our eyes engaging passing on the stairs

when I realized composing these lines

vines might climb together never be one

when we exchanged bright words for brief seconds

enough time to enthrall that morning when

a trout stirred for a naiad in the fronds

your image appealing to prime instinct

when I saw you in Springtime on those stairs

forever rising upwards till time’s end

kept en prise captivated held so still

put your fingers on your temples find it

where in memory we’ll always exist

a portal to paradise entered in bliss

there are two spaces we think we exist in

one not more sacred that world we live in 

one in our brain an entire universe

put your fingers on your temples find it

that world in your brain Greek myths will explain 

should you care to consider a box is a brain

in temples so holy all congregate

in awe of a finely carved wooden chest

never opened full of unnameables

circumscribed by wide band frequencies

in which a universe appears to expand

that box of all your temple’s treasures most 

dear that box as big as a mind’s clear eye

answering all you can pose asking why

Turing’s machine conceived this universe 

everything minus one might exist

non computable never imagined

just reading these words creates a new world

analyzable freshly imagined

choose your own stories and populate it

or reuse attic tales’ modern myth

make new legends where you are heroic

some force compels you to enact a play

absconding a person in a chariot 

wherever Aphrodite beckons

escaping into enchanted gardens 

for gods can mix with mortals we decree

in that world not sacred that world we see

Copyright © Dick Russell

         Richard M Russell

                 2025

Further Reading

A Work in Progress 
24

Glenn Hughes turns up in the pages of a book, The Verse Revolutionaries, written by Helen Carr.  It’s a wonderful book for those interested in that era, beginning before the first World War, that vortex of creativity emerging in staid dingy London in pubs with floors littered with cigarette butts and restaurants noted more for their cuisine than for their bathrooms.  He’s also mentioned in another book, Vivian Whelpton’s, Richard Aldington: Poet, Soldier and Lover 1911-1929.

What caught my eye was his connection with the University of Washington (UW).  I was a Classical Studies degree student at UW.  An online search revealed that UW’s Special Collections had material related to Glenn Hughes in its archive. Which I went to see.  

“In 1919, Glenn Hughes (1894-1964), a young man from Nebraska and a recent graduate of Stanford University, joined the faculty of the Department of Dramatic Art, a part of the English Department. Though he came to the UW as a poetry fellow, Hughes soon became determined to create a first-rate drama school.  From 1930 to 1961 he led the Department, which became the School of Drama in 1940. He wrote more than 60 plays, wrote and edited various literary and scholarly publications, launched one of the West Coast's first foreign film series, and established the drama program as the center of theatrical life in Seattle. The University of Washington came to be recognized as one of the leading institutions in the nation for professional training in theatre arts.” 

Source: https://drama.washington.edu/history

The University of Washington Bookstore published 49 chapbooks edited by Glenn Hughes between 1927 and 1931.  Source: www.historylink.org.

In addition to his academic credentials, Hughes was also a successful playwright and somebody with great entrepreneurial skill. Now he is remembered mostly for creating the university’s nationally acclaimed Drama program; in fact, the Penthouse Theater on campus is named after him.  Largely forgotten is the contribution Hughes made to modern poetry.  He was, one of the first, if not the first, to give serious scholarly critical attention to Imagist poetry.  He had spent time in the late 1920s on a Guggenheim grant researching such prominent imagists as F.S. Flint, Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound and H.D.  He had been immersed in the poetry scene in London and Paris for almost a year and had met many poets including W.B. Yeats.   In 1931, Stanford University Press published the resulting book: Imagism and the Imagists: a study in modern poetry.  Before then, Hughes had also begun editing a series of chapbooks released by the University of Washington Bookstore.  He was able to attract many prominent authors including Richard Aldington writing about D. H. Lawrence and Remy de Gourmont, Ezra Pound translating Ta Hio, and Herbert Read, who posthumously edited the writings of T.E. Hulme. 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                    2025

Intermission

A Work in Progress 
23

They were in Venice.  Donal explained to Ezra that having Beckett appear on stage was the equivalent of going down to the Underworld…a reference to the Cantos and Ezra nodded in a thoughtful way and continued to enjoy his ice cream cone.

Glenn Hughes had paused his lectures to let the screenplay unfold that was being workshopped by the students.

He did interrupt for a few minutes to suggest a side plot for Ariadne and Lesbia:

“Last week we established that H.D. can be equated with Ariadne.  Can we also equate her with Lesbia?  And can we find a clue in the Catullus poem if we assume he’s still in love with Lesbia who has rejected him and married another.  Remember that Ariadne has just woken up to find herself alone on a deserted beach.  She’s yet to encounter Dionysius.  Theseus and his crew have sailed away.  She’s hopping mad and will incant a curse on Theseus which will soon be fulfilled.  Yet, Catullus writes:

If marriage, yours and mine, had not been to your mind

Because you dreaded the harsh rules of an old-world father,

You could have least have brought me to your family home

That I might serve you as a slave in joyful work,

Soothing the white soles of your feet in clear water

Or spreading your couch with a purple coverlet

Ariadne is the King’s daughter.  She would have passed muster as a bride for a son with an old-world father. Is it plausible she would want to be retained as a slave to wash her master’s feet?    Could this self-abasement be the poet himself, describing the strength of his feeling for Lesbia?  Is there some significance in the purple coverlet.”

Dick Russell (C) Richard M Russell

                    2025

Beckett Joins the Cast

A Work in Progress
22

          imagine 

musicians play 

     frets of transparent guitar

           five nylon strings against blue sky

                  twenty-one strings

                       a sitar remembering 

                            aspects of George

                                  a three-stringed lute

                                         lamenting Tai Ching

                                                a moon reflected in a river

her face full of flowers     like snow her skin

imagine landscapes of a bay 

                          seen from a headland

and we’re approaching that headland

landing there

   stepping down 

        from a conveyance

             that brought us 

across rivers, deserts, forests, pastures, mountains

we are sitting in 

            a darkened theatre 

                  lit only by moonlight

                        

floating free in air

in five colored clouds      wafted by the wind

             we press upon 

       an empty stage

                    where ghosts stand

 forever 

Agamemnon 

Clytemnestra 

Oedipus   Phaedra

Hamlet   Lear   Ophelia   Portia 

  Catullus Lesbia                           

Dido Aeneas 

 Jason but 

        but not Medea

then Theseus   Ariadne   Estragon   Vladimir

Beckett appears on stage

Nodding acquaintance to the assembled cast

Who had been waiting for Godot

Like Aldington a man who had fought in war

A member of the Maquis, the Resistance

A first-class bat wearing his cricketer’s cap

Turning to the audience

“if you can provide the music

I can provide the words

Just hum a tune I can scan to

Give me a beat I can rap to”

Boasted Beckett

The Irish saved Western civilization

Back when Donal was a scribe

In a part he’d been cast for 

sharpening quills a set of goose feather

when Ireland faced off Caesar

But nothing the Irish could have done

Would have saved Egypt 

I see Medea’s not here

Was it an accident the library burned down

When Julius Caesar was in town?

First Alexander conquered

Then Ptolemy’s ruled

Then the Romans took over

Words won’t hold back armies, but water will

Ireland is a refuge 

For descendants of those horse loving people

The Celts, Indo Europeans from north of the Black Sea

Migrants back in the day

Refugees from Gaul

Those who came West who brought the same stories

As those that went East

Stories in Erse stories in Sanskrit

Thanks God we’ve an ocean between us

For those emigrants who went there

Are turning back towards us now

Looking for new frontiers to conquer

First claiming Greenland then all of Canada

Like Romans wanting to tax and defraud

Vax and reward

To be Irish is a state of mind

To be an Irish writer is a responsibility

Keeping the story going that needs to be retold

For in each upswell of mass emotion

Some hero must slay the Minotaur 

Or children of the elites

Will be devoured by fear

“On. Say on”

“Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better”

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2025

Ezra Is Laid Off

A Work in Progress
21

Then news came from Rewrite

improv was wanted now

there would be no new script

Ezra and Donal, your contracts were terminated

yesterday

So, 

Cleopatra was dead.  Ptolemy’s funding had ceased

they would have to learn improv

which Donal tried out in the pub and was hooted down

The bitter truth was they were out of fashion

Donal showed Ezra something he’d worked on

Richard Encounters the Minotaur

A Work in Progress
20

Ezra plays Apollonius of Rhodes

concocts a dream world of mythology 

Richard arrives in Crete as Theseus

one of the fourteen sent for sacrifice

he’ll meet Ariadne, Minos’ daughter

they will fall in love at first sight

she will help him survive the Minotaur

a man-like creature with a bull’s horned head

Theseus will challenge the Minotaur 

using Ariadne’s cape to goad him

mad making him charge with low horns to gore

calm Theseus facing his wild onslaught

with left arm raised high over blood red cape 

cleanly making the kill, his own escape

Theseus struck with a bullfighter’s skill

using his rapier with deadly skill

then he traced back Ariadne’s thread

finding his way out of that dread labyrinth

through passageways lit with an aureate gleam 

from two golden geese he is carrying

past littered white bones of Athenian youth

gnawed to the marrow by that Minotaur 

starved creature no comfort crazed in a maze

roaming the tunnels incessant for flesh

so, Theseus will emerge triumphant

claim his prize from a dumb-struck despot

sail off home with the young Athenians

taking Ariadne along the way

so, Richard will take H.D. to Naxos

before leaving her stranded on the beach 

he’d been transformed by the Minotaur

become half beast half man because of war 

he came back to her fierce from fighting in France

full of that anger at never ending fear

whom those who lost fathers those who lost sons

never could understand who never were there

then Aldington goes to Paris

meets Nancy Cunard, Sam Beckett et al

around Nancy buzzes the jazz age

she’ll take up the cause of negro’s rights 

endow Samuel Beckett with a cash prize

wherever she was emotions would rise

will it work to have Glenn Hughes be Zeus?

he was an American as was Ezra and H.D.

all the rest will have to play as Brits

has anybody heard of Glenn Hughes?

in that era when Beckett with his poem

dashed from Rue to rue to deposit it

Paris a center of civilized life

attracted all of those we now hold dear

but did they know back then Paris was it

not London not Venice not Reykjavik

economics explains why artists are

found congregating in selected bars

would it be noticed if we fudged the facts

that the Blue Moon tavern did not exist

that Seattle was not a hot place back then

when Glenn Hughes brought Babette back from Paris

we’re making notes for a screenplay

we can invent what they do what they say.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025

Theseus and the Golden Geese

A Work in Progress
19

Donal and Ezra being under contract on set

were just two actors waiting on Rewrite

to send over a new script

as Cleopatra’s funding had just disappeared

all would depend on the new team liking it

So, as artisan actors, crafty professionals

they discussed how would they play it

how to find the right tone that would make a big hit

one where the felon was an anti-hero 

the financier a thief

and the flamboyant American 

would be Glenn Hughes their director

testing the new team’s reaction

for survival depended on financial success

keeping the playhouse full

Comedy trumps True Crime, Tragedy is dull

Satire can backfire

Unable to anticipate what Rewrite would send

oldster and youngster worked side by side

you must keep going, Aphrodite insists

pondering those old fragments that he’s got

that aren’t sanctioned in Homer as decreed

some centuries before when Athens ruled

Jason’s quest for a golden fleece was good 

when Jason led some heroes from the hood

now Richard can retrieve the golden geese

without helping heroes just Ariadne’s leash

it would be fun to start making it new

Ezra Pound to Aphrodite can suggest

making a myth where the Amazons win!

“Would there be a market for that”, she’ll say

“I dislike Artemis let’s not today”.

now that metal money is seldom heard

on marble counters of cafés and bars

where cash registers that chime are antique 

where solitary silence is the norm

we can marvel anyone ever sought

quiet concentration without headphones

in a populous city with no private space

when papyrus was paper and scratch was slate

we can play Nancy Cunard as Artemis

most chaste of the goddesses clothed in gold

as Richard described her writing to Brigit

implying they were just good friends really 

while the jazz age buzzes around Nancy 

Ptolemy commands just short not fancy

in his time shorter poems were the rage

long poems like this one were seldom read

Ptolemy had tired of endless epics

so, poets hid old tales in commonplace 

using age-old formulas made anew

for small handheld scrolls easily unrolled

except Apollonius had in mind

Rome’s growing interest in all things Greek

as he wrote Jason and the Golden Fleece

we’ll write Theseus and the Golden Geese

knowing our best markets will be foreign 

our mutual Ptolemies have forgotten

there is much wisdom in antiquity

even though it has not propinquity

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                     2025

The Lecture on The Cantos of Ezra Pound

A Work in Progress
18

Having run out of time in his second lecture, on Catullus, and left for another time his thoughts on Ariadne as Lesbia as H.D., for his third lecture, Glenn Hughes began by discussing The Cantos.  

“Pound begins his epic with a voyage.  Let me quote the first lines:  

“And then went down to the ship,

Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and

We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,

Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also

Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward

Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,

Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.”

Hughes was an accomplished actor, somewhat of a ham, and he recited poetry well having a good ear for rhythm and able to adopt the voice of a bard.

“Pound is following in the tradition of the epic poets starting with Homer.  In many epic poems, such as Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, a descent into the Underworld comes in the middle of the story.  Pound differs in that he starts with a journey to the Underworld.  Pound is also different from those earlier epic poets in that he emerges from the Underworld into a world much larger than Homer, Virgil or Dante knew.  He also goes back into the Underworld later in the poem!  You can make it through the first Canto with a good Classical education and a familiarity with Homer.  Read many more of the Cantos and you’ll quickly discover that knowing just the Classics is insufficient to understand Pound.”

“And then went down to the ship,

Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea…”

“The ambiguous first lines might apply to a ship manned either by the Argonauts or Odysseus and his crew.  The crew are tearful so perhaps the reader would incline more to Odysseus.  Both Jason and Odysseus departed from Circe’s Isle.  Only gradually do we realize Pound is reenacting a scene from Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus goes into the Underworld.  Tiresias will prophesy Odysseus’ fate, and it is a fate that resembles Pound’s own life:

“Odysseus

“Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,

“Lose all companions.”

“So what are The Cantos about?  Could we get a screenplay out of them?  Even more than Catullus, Pound makes demands on his readers to comprehend a vast amount of subject matter.  Like Catullus, he is commenting on the situation around him by interweaving myth with factual history to make his points.  Unlike Catullus, he references more than ancient Greek mythology.  He assumes you are familiar with much of the history of Medieval Europe during the time of the troubadours.  He assumes that you have read Robert Browning’s Sordello, which he thought was a recent example of epic.  He widens the reach of his imagery as he develops the epic to encompass Confucian China, starting with cryptic references to So-Shu, a Han dynasty poet, as early as the second Canto.  In his second reference to So-Shu in that Canto, he joins Chinese and Greek imagery together, contrasting an image of a poet caught in a whirlpool at sea with Poseidon causing the whirlpool:

“And So-Shu churned in the sea, So-Shu also,

using the long moon for a churn-stick

Lithe turning of water,

sinews of Poseidon…”

He is using words to evoke a cinematic split screen type of image.  In the second Canto he introduced Robert Browning and integrated Browning’s epic into the history of epic.  He is including the Chinese in that history.  The Han dynasty lasted about 400 years and overlapped the transition of Rome from Republic to Empire.   Pound is going to keep bouncing back and forth between cultures as his own epic develops.”

 “Let’s look at one poem in particular, Canto 16.”  Hughes had distributed carbon copies of the poem plus a commentary.  “This prepares to talk about World War One.   We first emerge from Dante’s vision of hell to Pound’s vision of purgatory: William Blake,” picking up a copy of The Cantos to read aloud:

“shouting, whirling his arms, the swift limbs,

Howling against the evil,

  his eyes rolling,

Whirling like flaming cart-wheels,

and his head held backward to gaze on the evil

As he ran from it…”

“It is very visual poetry but, to be honest, can we do a better job than his own words if we want to show on stage or depict on film a man terrified of being caught by demons from Hell who are chasing him?  Pound presents much more of a challenge to make into a screenplay than Catullus.”

“Canto 16 comes to focus on the war in the trenches of World War One and the Russian Revolution.  Pound saw Fascism, which has its roots in Roman culture, as salvation for civilization.   As The Cantos develops his theme increasingly becomes the history of money and topics such as the accepted exchange rate of silver coins for gold and the interest rates levied on loans.  So what are the Cantos about?   You all know that he was saved from possible execution by being judged insane.  Perhaps genius is a form of insanity?  I do think Pound is like a Theseus who has lost his way coming from the Minotaur’s lair.  When I got him to read Canto 16 to me, he gave a most dramatic reading, especially the section in French, followed by Ezra imitating a Russian speaking English, obscuring with comedy a very serious subject.  He ended on a note of infinite sadness,” picking up the book again to quote:

“So we used to hear it at the opera,

That they wouldn’t be under Haig;

                and that the advance was beginning;

That it was going to begin in a week.”

“While Aldington was fighting in the trenches, Pound was in England and, for some of the time, with Yeats, in a cottage in Sussex.  He had tried to enlist in the British Army but had been turned down.  He had to be a non-combatant while so many of his generation, including close friends, died.  I think Pound lost Ariadne’s thread because of World War One and is still searching for a way out of the labyrinth.”

“Probably the best way to depict him in a screenplay would be as an Editor.  He’s reading his way through old books and papers in all shapes and sizes, cutting and pasting everything into one long narrative that he tries to summarize in a poem.   Each of the cuttings and pastings could be an episode in a movie.  Pound was a supremely good editor, “el miglio fabbro/the better smith”, according to the dedication given to The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, but it is possible he over edited his own work.  His factual history requires a vast amount of scholarship to appreciate, unless it is explained by footnotes.  Unfortunately, he’s chosen not to provide footnotes.  Perhaps he doesn’t realize that footnotes can further embellish a work of art! Not all classicists are historians.  Not all historians are economists.  Whatever their expertise, few have studied their equivalent discipline in Japanese and Chinese literature.”

“We don’t have the technology today to portray The Cantos as a screenplay.  To do so, we would need to immerse the audience in the narrative giving them multiple screens of information that they could choose to magnify or not in order to better view them.  It is almost as if we need to allow the audience to have reference materials at hand, perhaps they listen to through headphones, so that they can understand what is happening on the screen or on stage.  But it would be very avant garde.  Pound often just throws the reader a phrase or a word that encapsulates some idea he thinks is crucial to his narrative but he doesn’t give much help to those of us who lack his depth of scholarship.  I think a script would have to come up with a way to handle that, possibly through flashbacks, it is a challenge.  At some point, it becomes like trying to make a screenplay out of an encyclopedia.  A very tough assignment.” 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                    2025

Ezra Explains

A Work in Progress
17

Then 

news came from the harbor

Cleopatra’s fleet was returning 

with Octavian in hot pursuit

Mark Antony defeated at Actium

his legions deserting him

Glenn Hughes’ script

had jumped ahead in time to Egypt 

leaving myth behind

where in a break from rehearsing

drinking mint tea off set 

Donal asked Ezra about the situation

and Ezra having once been on the fascist side

explained

Cleo was defeated

That time fascism won

Egypt was annexed

An Empire was born

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                         2025

Donal Joins the Party

A Work in Progress
16

So Donal kicked his slippers off

travelled on bare feet

swiveled swaggered high stepped side stepped

made it to the street

*

He got a job reading manuscripts 

from accredited buyers who were scouring Greek colonies 

for fragments or scrolls entire libraries of anything Greek 

but with an emphasis on Homer

under the direction of Ezra Pound playing the part

of Apollonius as produced by Glenn Hughes

impresario

Donal was ready for whatever came around

his two feet planted firmly on the ground

he can’t see the future, but he can see the past

hold onto each moment they ain’t going to last

he came by a story that unwound in his mind

how the people of Minos overthrew their tyrant

releasing the Minotaur who heeding their distress 

wanting only to be vegan and set free

devoured both tyrant and grand vizier 

before renouncing human flesh

he put it aside for he’d found a romance

inspired by the story of Briseis

who was a prize Achilles was loath to lose

but what became of her after Achilles was killed

scrolls of her story had not survived

except for this fragment Ezra had found:

when over his muscles exercise ached

his ears bent back by loud female voices

defiant straightening his back shedding

plundering and pillaging just the thought

of laying waste waste lands besieging forts

bringing Briseis home just the thought of it

solaced Donal serving scribes where the seasons

sat subtended at the center which was sex

sharpening quills a set from goose feather

Donal considering which path to choose

go on like those scribes all of them older

their purpose copying not to infuse

great art they found dull, repetitious, rote

or become Donnelly weaving new weft

inserting fragments at a desk aslant

filling in gaps that bad copyists left

he wanted a codex of his own work

from which to read a tale to Bryony

by glowing embers when he’d tell a tale

in that one quiet hour with no irony

about blonde beautiful enslaved Briseis

whose story the Greek’s Homer had left out

proud backed Bryony eyes full of crisis

her home in ruins all under lichen

Bryony stood proud a strong early bloom

turning aside winter returning spring

a child sold to slavery now a slattern 

serving rows of shaved heads meager rations

silent cowled scribes unsatisfied hunger

most of all Donal’s driven by passion

unrestrained in love as he was younger

recovering splinters fragments of quill

suffering bony satyriasis

thinking to fondle her lovely bold breasts

while telling of beautiful Briseis

Donal swept the floor

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2025

Casting an Epic

A Work in Progress
15

Would it be better to make our own myths?

Aldington as Ares a man of honor

who fought in the trenches defended France

an angry young man even angrier when older

he called H.D. “Dooley” she was his main muse

his Aphrodite of the intellect

his Sappho, suffering, enisled by streams

clear visions of classical consciousness

his ties to her ever stronger with time

for she was a goddess as was Nancy

a wood nymph ten years younger than Dooley

who ran Aldington ragged keeping late hours

engaging in Dionysian revels

chimes at midnight caress dawn’s peal of bells

we’ll screen a billion-page-view epic 

we’ll need rôles for Richard, Ezra, H.D.

Glenn Hughes, Nancy, Brigit, Glenn’s wife Babette

let’s see big parts for three men four women 

with all of the main parts doubling as gods:

Richard as Ares, giver of strength, God of war

he’ll play Theseus versus Minotaur too

Ezra Pound as Dionysius, theater and wine

he will also play Apollonius

H.D. as Ariadne goddess of Crete 

deified by Dionysius and Ezra Pound

Brigit as Aphrodite goddess of love

Babette as Hera and Glenn Hughes as Zeus

two Americans, rulers of the world

we’ll make fiction when we are short of facts

our movie will unfurl like an old scroll

 in Alexandria’s classical library

we must not impede but keep on moving

we’ll portray Apollonius writing

a new work with a new type of hero 

more complex than Homer’s Odysseus

for he’s like Aldington a slave to her

goddess both ethereal and sublime

Aphrodite Urania grips his mind

if we’re smart, we’ll script it for Bollywood

even if Sanskrit would be misunderstood

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025