Posts
Showing posts from 2020
Colorado Lagoon: Xmas
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Colorado Lagoon. An uneasy pair. The birds love to sit on the floating black tubes used to channel electrical cords to the buoyed Xmas trees. Happy Holidays! #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #coloradolagoon #longbeach #birds #egrets #pelicans #xmas #holidays #poetry #readmorepoetry #offcourse #triptych #ninetyversts
Chekhov: Sakhalin
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
The walls and ceiling seemed to be covered with funeral crape, moving as if in a wind; from isolated spots in the crape which scurried along swiftly and raggedly one could guess what this seething, overflowing mass consisted of. A rustling and loud whispering could be heard, as if the cockroaches and bugs* were hurrying somewhere and conferring.
D'Orsay Clock
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Paris. D'Orsay. Not a clear day and only my phone (need to return and get a better pic). Winter, I believe. #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #paris #dorsay #dorsayclock #art #artmuseum #oldtrainstations #architecture #bigclocks #views #montmarte #montmarteinhaze #poetry #readmorepoetry #readninetyversts https://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue83/r_l_swihart.html
Chekhov: Sakhalin
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
However, one grey-haired old man, sixty to sixty-five years old, Terekhov by name, who was being kept in the dark punishment cell, produced on me the impression of a real villain. The day before my arrival, he had been punished with the lash, and when our conversation turned to this he showed me his buttocks, which were dark-blue-crimson from bruises. According to the prisoners’ stories, this old man had murdered sixty people in his time; he was alleged to have carried on in the following fashion: he would spy out which of the newly arrived prisoners were a bit better off, and entice them into escaping with him; then, in the taiga, he would kill them and rob them, and in order to hide the traces of the crime, he would cut the corpses into pieces and throw them in the river. The last time they had tried to capture him, he had defended himself against the overseers by brandishing a large oak cudgel. Looking at his dull, tinny eyes, and his large, half-shaven skull, angular as a cobb...
Chekhov: Sakhalin
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
The whole way to Dooay, screes can be seen on the steep, sheer coastline, on which here and there specks and strips glint blackly, an arshin to a sazhen in width; this is coal. The strata of coal here, according to specialists’ accounts, are squeezed between layers of sandstone, slatey clay, clayey slate and clayey sand, which have been lifted, bent, moved or pushed down by seams of basalt, diorites and porphyry which jut out in many spots in large outcrops. It must be considered beautiful after its own fashion, but prejudice against the place is so deep-seated that you regard not only the people but even the plants with pity that they grow in this particular spot of all places. Seven versts further on, the shoreline is broken by a fissure. This is the Voyevodsk Chasm; here, quite alone, stands the dreadful Voyevodsk Prison, in which are kept the hardened criminals, including those chained to wheelbarrows. Sentries patrol round the prison; apart from them not another living creature ma...
R L Swihart's "Triptych: Ninety Versts"
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
My poems "Triptych: Ninety Versts" are up at Off Course, Issue #83, December 20. A little different for me (perhaps). Give it a try. https://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue83/r_l_swihart.html #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #offcourse #issue83 #poetry #triptych #ninetyversts #rlswihart #chekhov #charliethedog #reading #writing #earlymorning #buses #somethingaboutlove #etcetera
Hariett Wieder: Hummingbird
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Bolsa Chica. Hariett Wieder Park. Not great (I was afraid if I got any closer I'd lose the little guy) but it's my first hummingbird. Hariett Wieder was a bit of a letdown (nice playground but very little access to Bolsa Chica) but I think it's a work-in-progress re birds and the reserve. #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #bolsachica #hariettwieder #birds #hummingbirds #thelittleguy #huntington #seapoint #parks #reserves #poetry #walking #vanishinglandscapes
Bolsa Chica: Osprey
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Bolsa Chica (first time in weeks). Mr. Reliable. Didn't get a lot of action because I got there late-morning. And yet he was there: same spot, highest perch. Not very good pics -- from Best to Sleepy Hollow Routine -- but I'll blame it on the sun and his preening time. #rlswihart #rl_swihart #bolsachica #osprey #southerncalifornia #birds #birdpoetry #poetry #readmorepoetry #walking
The Gnawing Mouse
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
Poem by Ezra Pound. Even when I forget the exact wording (my mind always changes "full" to "long"), the gist is there. I think I also connected (long ago) the field mouse to Michelangelo's gnawing mouse. Anyway ... #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #ezrapound #mouse #fieldmouse #gnawingmouse #poetry #reading
Chekhov @ Sakhalin
- Get link
- X
- Other Apps
At Korsakovsk I was accompanied round the cabins by the convict Kislyakov, quite a strange man. Very probably the court reporters still have not forgotten him. This was the same Kislyakov, a military clerk, who, at St Petersburg, killed his wife on St Nikolai’s Street with a hammer and presented himself before the City Governor to announce his crime. According to his story, his wife had been beautiful, and he had loved her very much, but one day after quarrelling with her he had sworn before an icon to kill her, and from that time right up to the murder some invisible power had whispered without ceasing in his ear: “Kill, kill!” Up to the trial he had been in St Nikolai’s Hospital; very probably because of this he himself considered he was a psychopath, for he more than once asked me to plead on his behalf that he should be recognized as a lunatic and shut up in a monastery.* His entire penal servitude consisted of the following: in the prison he had been entrusted with making the...