Without Lifting A Finger

  I have a new poem in the Nov 2026 issue of Quadrant Magazine, accessible online or in print. Also, I have been given permission to share my poem here (see above or use the link below): "Gymnopedie." RL Swihart: ‘Gymnopedie’ - Quadrant https://share.google/s3n0BgDtT0xzrsx4T Enjoy! and check out the rest of the magazine. #rlswihart13  #gymnopedie  #quadrantmagazine  #poetry #readmorepoetry2026💕

“You’re not Andrei, are you?” the woman suddenly asked. “Yes. Why?” “There was a letter lying around here addressed to Andrei, but it didn’t say which Andrei. Maybe it’s for you.” “It is,” said Andrei. “Can you give me it?” “It was somewhere around here,” the woman mumbled, rummaging through the heap of clothes on the table. “It’ll take months to sort all this out. Life’s awful nowadays. Always a crush in the corridor—it’s too much to cope with. Found it. There it is. Are you sure it’s for you? Have you got your ticket with you?” “Haven’t got one,” Andrei joked familiarly. The woman giggled, and held out the envelope. “Save your dirty jokes for the young girls,” she said skittishly.

Have you seen any of our friends around recently?” “I see Grisha pretty often,” said Andrei. “He’s got lots of money now. And I saw Sergei just recently. He’s changed a lot. Doesn’t drink or smoke. He’s become a bedeist.” “What’s that?” “It’s a religion, a very beautiful one. They believe we’re being pulled along by a ‘B.D. 3’ locomotive—sometimes they just call it a ‘Number 3,’ and we’re traveling toward a Bright Dawn. Those who believe in the ‘B.D. 3’ will pass over the final bridge, but the others won’t.”

“Where are we? What can you hear?” Andrei pulled Khan’s hands off his jacket and gave a puzzled frown, then he realized he could hear the regular rhythmic hammering of steel on steel, which had been there all the time, even though he wasn’t consciously aware of it. “What is the ‘Yellow Arrow’?” Khan repeated. “Where are we?” He turned Andrei to face the window, and Andrei saw the tops of the trees hurtling past the window from left to right. “Well?” “Hang on,” said Andrei, “hang on.” He clutched his head in his hands and sat down on the bunk bed. “I remember,” he said. “The ‘Yellow Arrow’ is a train traveling toward a ruined bridge. The train we’re riding in.”

Watching the hot sunlight falling on the tablecloth covered with sticky blotches and crumbs, Andrei was suddenly struck by the thought of what a genuine tragedy it was for millions of light rays to set out on their journey from the surface of the sun, go hurtling through the infinite void of space and pierce the miles-thick sky of Earth, only to be extinguished in the revolting remains of yesterday’s soup. Maybe these yellow arrows slanting in through the window were conscious, hoped for something better—and realized that their hopes were groundless, giving them all the necessary ingredients for suffering.

Closing the door behind him, Andrei turned on the tap, and glanced at his face in the mirror. In the last five years, he thought, rather than maturing or growing old, it had simply gone out of style, along with flared trousers, transcendental meditation and Fleetwood Mac.

Katerina Lvovna was trembling. Her roving gaze became fixed and wild. Her arms reached out somewhere into space once or twice and dropped again. Another moment—and she suddenly began to sway all over, not taking her eyes from the dark waves, bent down, seized Sonetka by the legs, and in one sweep threw the girl and herself overboard. Everyone was petrified with amazement. Katerina Lvovna appeared at the top of a wave and sank again; another wave tossed up Sonetka. “A hook! Throw them a hook!” they shouted on the ferry. A heavy hook on a long rope soared up and fell into the water. Sonetka could no longer be seen. Two seconds later, borne away from the ferry by the swift current, she again flailed her arms; but at the same moment, out of another wave, Katerina Lvovna rose up almost to the waist, threw herself on Sonetka like a strong pike on a soft-finned little roach, and neither of them appeared again.

In the evening, Boris Timofeich ate a bit of kasha with mushrooms and got heartburn; then suddenly there was pain in the pit of his stomach; he was seized with terrible vomiting, and towards morning he died, just as the rats died in his storehouses, Katerina Lvovna having always prepared a special food for them with her own hands, using a dangerous white powder entrusted to her keeping. Katerina Lvovna delivered her Sergei from the old man’s stone larder and, with no shame before people’s eyes, placed him in her husband’s bed to rest from her father-in-law’s beating; and the father-in-law, Boris Timofeich, they buried without second thoughts, according to the Christian rule. Amazingly enough, no one thought anything of it: Boris Timofeich had died, died from eating mushrooms, as many had died from eating them. They buried Boris Timofeich hastily, without even waiting for his son, because the weather was warm, and the man sent to the mill for Zinovy Borisych had not found him there. He ...

 

The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart.  At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner.  His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.  "Come along, papa," she said.  And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead.  Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Monsieur Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing.  When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary's goin...

California Dreamin': Bracing for the Worst, Hoping for the Best. Took a walk on the Boardwalk, as far as 62nd St (where it was closed). Walked back on the "safer side" of Long Beach's "Peninsula" (facing Naples), which isn't as safe as you might think. Beautiful Day in CA.💛 #rlswihart13  #thepeninsula  #longbeach  #hopingforthebest  #readmorepoetry2026💕 "

Each time Leon had to tell her everything that he had done since their last meeting. She asked him for some verses--some verses "for herself," a "love poem" in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in a "Keepsake." This was less from vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity and dissimulation? * From Google AI:

She appears in Madame Bovary (just before Leon meets Emma in the cathedral). Apparently Nabokov made a mistake in ID-ing the biblical dancer -- he thought she was Miriam (who dances in Exodus with a tambourine, after the Israelites safely cross the Red Sea) and not Salome (who dances for Herod's birthday).  Almost certainly the local moniker "Marianne" is an heirloom from the French Revolution.

 

We visited the Flaubert Medical History Museum (more for Flaubert than Medical History) in Rouen no more than a month ago, so poor Hippolyte's operation stands out quite vividly: A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted out in the shop-- "These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do the clever, and they cram you with remedies without, troubling about the consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants, coxcombs,...

Hard to believe the "black butterflies" weren't inspiration for Nabokov's "black butterflies" in Pale Fire, but apparently VN never explicitly admitted it.;) * One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn.  The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at least flew up the chimney. &&& Here's the "parallel" passage in Pale Fire : As a rule, Shade destroyed drafts the moment he ceased to need them: well do I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a w...

But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.

The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be entrees. Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following.

 

SILK OF A SOUL  Never did I speak—with her  either about love  or about death  only blind taste and mute touch  used to run between us  when absorbed in ourselves  we lay close  I must peek inside her  to see what she wears  at her centre  when she slept  with her lips open  I peeked  and what and what  would you think  I caught sight of  I was expecting branches  I was expecting a bird  I was expecting a house by a lake  great and silent  but there on a glass counter  I caught sight of  a pair of silk stockings  my God I’ll buy her  those stockings  I’ll buy them but— what will appear then  on the glass counter  of the little soul  will it be something  which cannot be touched  even with one finger of a dream Note: Line breaks are mine Translators of Herbert's "Collected Poems": Milosz, Dale, Valles

 

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonourably, foolishly, viciously. The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly. Flaubert always sides with minorities, with ‘the Bedouin, the Heretic, the philosopher, the hermit, the Poet’. In 1867 forty-three gypsies pitched camp in the Cours La Reine and aroused much hatred among the Rouennais. Flaubert delighted in their presence and gave them money. No doubt you wish to pat him on the head for this. If he’d known he was gaining the approval of the future, he’d probably have kept the money to himself.

A very eclectic museum. Housed in part of the old Hotel-Dieu (Flaubert's father was a doctor, Flaubert was born there), the museum is full of medical oddities from the 19th century, objects re Flaubert's life and work, this and that. Today I'm just posting the possible Loulous (side-by-side in the museum) that hovered over Flaubert and his story, "A Simple Soul."

Connections: Hockney's original artwork was used to illustrate Flaubert's story "A Simple Heart/Soul." Later (1984) it was used for the dust jacket of the first edition of Julian Barnes' novel, Flaubert's Parrot. A copy of the dust jacket used for Barnes' novel:

That day a great joy came to her: at dinner-time, Madame de Larsonniere's servant called with the parrot, the cage, and the perch and chain and lock. A note from the baroness told Madame Aubain that as her husband had been promoted to a prefecture, they were leaving that night, and she begged her to accept the bird as a remembrance and a token of her esteem. Since a long time the parrot had been on Felicite's mind, because he came from America, which reminded her of Victor, and she had approached the negro on the subject. Once even, she had said: "How glad Madame would be to have him!" The man had repeated this remark to his mistress who, not being able to keep the bird, took this means of getting rid of it.  CHAPTER IV  He was called Loulou. His body was green, his head blue, the tips of his wings were pink and his breast was golden.

In order to facilitate the children's studies, he presented them with an engraved geography which represented various scenes of the world; cannibals with feather head-dresses, a gorilla kidnapping a young girl, Arabs in the desert, a whale being harpooned, etc.

One of 20-some versions, this one is in the Rouen Museum.

Following in Monet's footsteps, though I realize I'm a total cheat.;)

 

  Offcourse Issue #106, Sept. 2026 https://share.google/zdstNbkaJUasCu4dR