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