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