Lucky you, Gregory, to have heard Peter Russell read in Venice. Am I remembering right that you are from Bristol? That was Peter’s home city as well.
When I met him, he was in his last years, living in an old mill house on a back road in the Valdarno. His clothes were full of holes, he was penniless, his house was a disaster area, but his books and papers were impeccably arranged. And he was a fascinating conversationalist, with a great sense of humor.
This poem he wrote for Pound’s birthday in 1965 seems especially apt, given it is its fiftieth anniversary
For Ezra Pound’s Eightieth Birthday
San Trovaso
You walk alone along the road like God,
Grey-bearded, ancient, like a mad old king;
And you proclaim with absent-minded nod
That you’ve lost interest in everything.
Le Zattere
Becalmed, old man, step out upon the rafts
And start your marvellous journey once again!
Each day the world is new, and new bronze shafts
Drive new Odysseuses around the brain.
La Dogana
Becalmed upon what rocks, old man,
Are you bewitched and stay?
The hot Mediterranean intoxicates your brain
And the white dolphins play.
Giudecca
A gull stands motionless upon a buoy—
Old man, you seem to float upon great waves
Far out from the abandoned coast of Troy
And farther still from all the abandoned graves.
—Peter Russell, Venice, 29 October 1965
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