Without Lifting A Finger

I think he himself said something like his poetry doesn't rise to level of his prose, but this poem is somewhat interesting, especially because it's a companion piece to the story he tells in The Emigrants. * New Jersey Journey  Spent two hours at the end of December on the Garden State Highway In the ancient Ford’s trunk nothing but my heart grown heavier year by year  A protracted catastrophe: the constant river of traffic the endless business of overtaking vicious eye-contact with total strangers in the adjacent lane  Driven by yearning for its prehistoric brothers a Jumbo climbs out of Newark airport over marshes and lagoons a giant smoking mountain of rubbish and the countless lights of the refineries  Mile after mile of stunted trees telegraph poles fields of blueberries a Siberian countryside colonized then run to seed with moribund supermarkets abandoned poultry farms haunted by millions and millions of breakfast eggs harboring the undeciphered sighs of an en...

Still, it is the capital, where until now I’ve failed in all my errands: the Japanese Embassy is closed for a ‘Festival of Flowers’, the freight company hasn’t anything going east before the autumn, and the journalists I hoped to see haven’t kept our appointment. Our new consul — fresh from Hong Kong — on whom I was rather relying, had been knocked down by a taxi the day he took up his post. I visited him in hospital. Multiple fractures. He was swathed in bandages like a mummy, adrift in morphine, dreaming of his longed-for retirement; he could offer only incoherent remarks apropos of Berne’s ingratitude and the mushrooms of the northern Vaud. My seedy hotel is much too dear for what it offers. From my attic I survey varnished tile roofs and a sea of saturated foliage foaming against the low clouds. Silly crows play in nooks and crannies, croaking all the time. Languid, arrogant boys. Long corridors gleaming with polish. Dark figures loafing about or motionless in front of their cups o...

  My "Dipper Day" (all about the bird and more) is in the current Meniscus 14.1 (2026), pp. 141 - 142. See what you think (see "tease" above)! Thanks to Jen Webb and all the Meniscus staff. https://www.meniscus.org.au/_files/ugd/7c40c1_9e1f0dd429934dc88f099994dda0d83a.pdf #rlswihart13 #meniscusliteraryjournal  #dipperday #poetry #readmorepoetry2026💕

 

Claude decided he would go to the Yoeders' today, and to the Dawsons' tomorrow. He didn't like to think there might be hard feeling toward him in a house where he had had so many good times, and where he had often found a refuge when things were dull at home. The Yoeder boys had a music-box long before the days of Victrolas, and a magic lantern, and the old grandmother made wonderful shadow-pictures on a sheet, and told stories about them. She used to turn the map of Europe upside down on the kitchen table and showed the children how, in this position, it looked like a jungfrau; and recited a long German rhyme which told how Spain was the maiden's head, the Pyrenees her lace ruff, Germany her heart and bosom, England and Italy were two arms, and Russia, though it looked so big, was only a hoopskirt. This rhyme would probably be condemned as dangerous propaganda now!

The preacher had his Bible in his hand and was standing under the light, hunting for his chapter. Enid would have preferred to have Mr. Weldon come down from Lincoln to marry her, but that would have wounded Mr. Snowberry deeply. After all, he was her minister, though he was not eloquent and persuasive like Arthur Weldon. He had fewer English words at his command than most human beings, and even those did not come to him readily. In his pulpit he sought for them and struggled with them until drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead and fell upon his coarse, matted brown beard. But he believed what he said, and language was so little an accomplishment with him that he was not tempted to say more than he believed. He had been a drummer boy in the Civil War, on the losing side, and he was a simple, courageous man.