Toast Him with Wine

A Work in Progress
53

Donal on the steps of Denny Hall playing his guitar...

When you’ve been trumped you play a long game

time’s on your side as all things decline

he must first succeed before he can fail

so, cheer on success and toast him with wine

each Senate vote is a base litmus test

he’s succeeded so far, he can fail at the bar

if five judges oppose him it hasn’t happened so far

he’s got them all thinking they must vote like the rest

not for the country not for what’s best

mostly for crypto capitalists

we dream of sixty vote impeachments

reality intrudes on reenactments

this time should there be a time 

we should make it stick

it will have to be quick

a bipartisan thing

when you’ve been trumped watch out for madmen

crazed with power and enabling a king

trading votes in order to pay homage 

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 a mad king and his court at work

next year the country will cast out some bigots

when you’ve been trumped you play a long game

for time’s on your side as all things decline

before he can fail, he must first succeed

so, cheer on success and toast him with wine

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025

Gods of the Garden 

A Work in Progress
52

When peace descends and children are well fed

and civilized behavior prevails

the gods will return

her fingers test the pea pods 

plucking those that firmly bulge

her thumb cracks open to divulge 

green peas she nudges into a bowl

bees force entrance to acanthus flowers

while pollinating towering stems

while other bees gather nectar 

from the drooping leaves

her touch enlivens limp pea pods

growing against gravity

nimbly uncovers strawberries hidden by leaves

finding them in crevices among the rock walls

just being there is enough

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2025

He did it

A Work in Progress
51

So now he’s done it 

was he dared on 

or did he do it

himself?

Was he lied to?

Whatever it was 

It’s now a salient fact

It was done

and he did it

and because he did it

suddenly a cease fire is possible

bringing an end to …?

what about Gaza?

what about Ukraine?

Iran and Russia are one and the same

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2025

Glenn Hughes Digresses

A Work in Progress
50

Lesbia’s slaves are remaking a disheveled bed, and they display another coverlet. 

This has an embroidered scene showing Lesbia abandoned by Catullus, who is sailing away across a lake where a military company is waiting on the other side.   The scene portrayed dissolves into footage of Roman cavalry (Catullus among them) raiding a town in Gaul, looting its consecrated Druid space and either killing or enslaving the inhabitants.

We also see World War 1 footage of trench warfare and Richard Aldington on a dark night leading soldiers from his company illuminated by occasional flares, moving between corpses of gas masked soldiers suspended on barbed wire, removing their dog tags.  When touched the dead fall apart.  They have been on the wire for a long time.  Some of the dead have German helmets, others British.

Next Episode (Denny Hall, University of Washington)

Glenn Hughes turns back to the class after watching the footage:

“What happened over two thousand years ago is old enough to be shrouded in myth.  Can we really distinguish the story of Catullus and Lesbia from other stories that were probably well known to a Roman audience in the time of the Triumvirate?  Stories about couples such as: Aphrodite and Anchises, Artemis and Hippolytus, Orpheus and Eurydice, Jason and Medea, Theseus and Ariadne?  In all these myths the male is mortal, not a god.  They were mortal men who loved either a goddess or a mortal woman.  In the myths, the women were depicted in ways that would fire the imagination of a warrior although in the Jason story the woman is a powerful sorceress capable of exacting revenge.  Catullus depicted his Lesbia in ways that went beyond these older treatments of women.  He set her in a contemporary location and let her appeal to his intellect as well as to his loins.  She is a mortal woman who can love and leave, perhaps more than one man.”  

“H.D and Aldington also come to mind.  It’s because I met them, I had the idea of linking them with Catullus and Lesbia.  I met H.D. briefly in Paris, I even danced with her in a night club where she had a great time with Aldington, who was also there. I’d stayed with Aldington at his cottage in England before.  I exchanged letters with both, a lot more with Aldington.  I’m selling all those letters to a library in Texas by the way.”

“There is no evidence to show that Catullus did not know Lesbia, perhaps even married Lesbia, when he was 21 and she was six years older.  There is no evidence that they separated soon thereafter.  Did she have a miscarriage?   Did Catullus go off to fight in Spain or in Gaul?  The scholars will tell us there is no evidence that Catullus was ever in a war.  But he was a high born Roman.  War was a summer job, something Romans did to get rich!  Why would he write about something so mundane?  The scholars will confirm that divorce was easy to accomplish in pre-Augustan Rome, perhaps even easier in Verona, his hometown, where his father was a prominent businessman.  Now ten years have passed, and Catullus is in Rome at the same time as Lesbia.   She is married to a very rich man and flaunts her wealth and prestige.   Catullus is dependent on his father.   He has been composing poems about her again, finding himself jealous of her husband and her other lovers, even equating her with a whore.  Just as Aldington, having rejected H.D. ten years before, may have fallen in love with her again in Paris where she was now unattainable.  Both Catullus and Aldington wrote about women in revolutionary ways.” 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025

Catullus: Critical of Caesar

A Work in Progress 
49

Though we live free we are oppressed

these are tense time my muscles know

crave a hot bath so they might unclench

wash away faraway wars I’ve no part in.

Caesar’s putting a wrench into what once worked well

now all must suffer his constant farting

oppressions of freedom cruelty to science

trampling of citizens human rights

bringing back slavery for those we made free

for whose benefit if not for our enemies.

No conquering hero he he owes Crassus his wealth

he's more an appeaser who’ll delay deciding

waiting for bigger bribes to stay his small hand

we are being oppressed there’s no peace in the land

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                         2025