FOUR SHORT POEMS by Peter Russell
THE TWO BIRDS
Always in the forest I see two birds
Opposed on a single tree.
One is pecking the Quits, the other observes,
Silently, mockingly.
One day seeing me come, they utter words,
The one white as snow, the other as black as coal,
And in turn they say "I am your body" "I am your soul."
ANOTHER DREAM SONG
A one-eyed woman sat by a well
With a cat and a hazel-fork.
She rose, and the hazel-fork fell,—
Her face was the face of the sparrow-hawk.
A ripe fig on a giant fig-tree
I fall to the ground and lie still,—
The sweet river flows down to the sea
And the wind blows round the hill.
WATER TO OCEAN
She can renew and can create
Green from the ground and flowers from stones
In valleys parched set streams in spate
And raise up with a word dry bones.
VENICE IN WINTER
for Gitta in Berlin
The clouds obscure the island and the church
And the cold sea is streaked with grey like mud;
Dark cypresses (but not a single birch
As in Berlin), edge the Venetian flood.
Follow the Lido with your wind-swept eye
---Long needle of the land that threads the sea---
Where white gulls in the stormy distance, fly
Past lonely gardens and the last green tree.
You wouldn't think the citizens would dare
To venture out upon the streets below
With all this frosty dampness in the air;
But when night falls you'll see the scarlet glow
Of braziers roasting chestnuts near the Square,
And sweet potatoes in Sant'Angelo.
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Here is the theme poem of Peter Russell's Theories
How can one bear to be alive?
Five hundred thousand things to do!
Solitary dreamer in a honey-hive.
I dream of you...
The problem is, of course, to be,
In a dead world of waxen cells,
Not that there's monotony
Even in insect hells.
To be, --it's no good buzzing around
Doing as people do in Rome,
Droning of penny, shilling, pound--
To build the honey-comb.
The honey comes from what you do
Each rushing second, minute, hour;
Yours is the sweetness that is true,
No matter what the flower.
The plants and trees are all in tune,
Petals and anthers ranged in space;
The tilings are simultaneous, I'm
Out of time, out of place.
For when I light on this or that
I'm neither there nor am I here;
I can't see what I'm staring at,
Though nothing's there to interfere.
The air is clear and I am free
At any time of day or night,
To visit any flower or tree
In sunshine, shadow, or moonlight
What is it then that hinders me?
Why is it that I don't arrived
- I am a solitary bee
Dreaming in a beehive
Where Time and Space have ceased to be,
And so there are no things;
I'm everywhere and nowhere,—me,
On imaginary wings.
Solitary but never alone,
Freeholder of the emptied soul;
Let workers say I'm just a drone
And drive me out the entrance-hole,
Beyond the stratosphere and stars,
Past even humming nuclei,
My life which was hyperbolas
Is now a single "l',
All sets and theorems put aside,
All space and matter lost to view.
Let insects make insecticide!
Honey, for me and you...
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Peter Russell
Lido di Venezia
31st January 1973
Sitting.Watching.As a fly flies.Watching the pattern.As the fly traces out a square.Seeming to bounce from invisible walls,suddenly accelerated out of control.Out of equilibrium.The pattern changing.Always tracing straight lines.Precise angles.But now triangles,now lop-sided squares.Sitting watching.Feeling a way.Moving.Up there.Searching for reason.Feeling ill.Suddenly ill.Worried into fears.The sudden changes of direction pulling.Mind cold,sickening.Wanting form,finding random,fragmented flight.Sit watching till the dullness of it,the mindlessness of it,palls. Bores.Wipe out the disturbance.Look away.
Act yourself.Cover the space
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if not in the nothingness of these |