POEMS BY ADAM RUSSELL

Carving Lumière

Shifting in shadowed rooms, polygon
Penumbra, dull bodies dark-pallored pitter-
Patter with funest motives. Framed
Light, shrouded.

The shivered bodies feign prowess,
Prowling about, carving lumière; lungs and
Lungs lunge pretence with blows of hollow hopped-
Up howls.

The rooms shadowed
Shift around, to new positions, the past
Remembers, itself an
Answer.

Skipping
i

Bowing there
in fixity
a bare tree balanced in time past
(not history)
and the tremoring
vicissitude – time to come – its pond-plops of leaves
its light
its rain
its light rain rumbling into
thunder
crackling above the bare tree
bowing over the
water.

The bare tree bows for the bare present,
Finger-snap of grey-gnarled,
Barren.

But in time past (not history) this
barren oak betokened fecundity
in
green flourishes, sweeps,
stood tall lush gleam beside the pond,
under the sun
stars.

ii

Time past transfers to present, to time to come.
Time past is not gone, not history: The barren oak bows in
Fixity,
Finger-snap grey.

bugs etc

Hi, today in Shaftesbury Square, Belfast. This morning my nose set off horribly by bugs etc in my mother's house. After a breakfast of prunes, all bran and tea I went up to the bog for a deep chunder. Emerging after 30 minutes or so I managed to crawl into the shower, pull the shower curtain over and collapse into the warm, balmy stream of water, somehow also managing to lather my hair with soap. Chundering on I got back into bed to sleep off the further after effects of Xmas, bidding it farewell until another year. bw

I decided not to go to Saudi. There was something about the image and presentation at the interview that told me that these people were big and important about 10 yrs ago. Even their video looked ten yrs old. So presently I'm doing supply teaching. The School I'm in is big and most of the students have some issues re behavioural or learning difficulties. A class is more about containment unfortunately than actual teaching although it is sometimes possible to teach them and they can be focussed and engaged in a way that is actually both innocent and touching. There are 45 languages spoken in the school. Zum beispiel, sometimes a class has Turkish students, Greeks but there may also be Kurds and Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. The Turkish Cypriots have more in common with the Greek Cypriots than with their folk on the mainland. There are many black African minorities and some of them I can spot, such as the Somali contingent. There are others who are clearly West Indian and very, very anglified. There's also a sizeable Eastern European contingent, but no Germans, Austrians, French obviously although there are some 2nd generation Italians.

I'm sure this is real nipple to the windowpane weather in Bayern and I've heard that Southern Germany is experiencing difficulties with it's gas supply via this problem with Gazprom and the Ukraine. So Southern Germany is now having to be supplied by North Germany. This is a consequence of all kinds of daft Cold War mechanisms that have hung over into our era.