R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 97

Frost's "Mending Wall"

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

(By Robert Frost)

*

P.s. Not sure it totally applies: split rails are a bit different.

Colorado Lagoon @ Night

Colorado Lagoon @ Night. A bit homesick I guess.

#rlswihart #woodhenge #coloradolagoon #longbeach #poetry #readmorepoetry

JCC (JC) & Wet Nurses

 JCC (now JC). Just one of many alma maters = wet nurses. Jackson, MI.

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Morning Idyll

Morning Idyll. Browns Lake Road. Jackson, MI.

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From Chekhov's "Ward No. 6"

 "Calm yourself," said Andrey Yefimitch, smiling guiltily. "I assure you I have never stolen anything; and as to the rest, most likely you greatly exaggerate. I see you are angry with me. Calm yourself, I beg, if you can, and tell me coolly what are you angry for?" 

"What are you keeping me here for?" 

"Because you are ill." 

"Yes, I am ill. But you know dozens, hundreds of madmen are walking about in freedom because your ignorance is incapable of distinguishing them from the sane. Why am I and these poor wretches to be shut up here like scapegoats for all the rest? You, your assistant, the superintendent, and all your hospital rabble, are immeasurably inferior to every one of us morally; why then are we shut up and you not? Where's the logic of it?" 

"Morality and logic don't come in, it all depends on chance. If anyone is shut up he has to stay, and if anyone is not shut up he can walk about, that's all. There is neither morality nor logic in my being a doctor and your being a mental patient, there is nothing but idle chance." 

"That twaddle I don't understand. . ." Ivan Dmitritch brought out in a hollow voice, and he sat down on his bed. 

Long Beach Collage

Long Beach Collage. Getting a bit homesick.

#rlswihart13 #rlswihart #woodhenge #longbeach #poetry #readmorepoetry 

Colorado Lagoon (Home)

Michigan sojourn has been good for my health (walking, mom-time), but I'm getting a bit homesick. Will go to Mackinac Island and then fly home by 8/20. Here's a pic of my lagoon.

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STGM

From Powazki Cemetery (Warsaw, Poland). Sic Transit Gloria Mundi (STGM). Was looking for another Latin phrase on gravestones and found this one.

#rlswihart #woodhenge #powazki #stgm #sictransitgloriamundi

Kid Stuff

 Kid Stuff. Liberty General Store and Mill Pond -- pretty much all there is: then and now. We used to do "cannonballs" off the bridge (in memory more solid than what's there today).

@rl_swihart @amazon #rlswihart #woodhenge #childhood #libertymi  #poetry #readmorepoetry

"Gooseberries" by Chekhov

Decided to hang with Chekhov for a bit more before moving on to the Goncourt brothers. (I'm at my mother's country house now -- for another week or so -- and it sometimes makes me feel like reaching for Chekhov, especially in summer.) This "clip" is from "Gooseberries," a short story you can easily down just before a lazy summertime nap.

"But the point just now is not he, but myself. I want to tell you about the change that took place in me during the brief hours I spent at his country place. In the evening, when we were drinking tea, the cook put on the table a plateful of gooseberries. They were not bought, but his own gooseberries, gathered for the first time since the bushes were planted. Nikolay Ivanovitch laughed and looked for a minute in silence at the gooseberries, with tears in his eyes; he could not speak for excitement. Then he put one gooseberry in his mouth, looked at me with the triumph of a child who has at last received his favourite toy, and said: "'How delicious!' "And he ate them greedily, continually repeating, 'Ah, how delicious! Do taste them!' "They were sour and unripe, but, as Pushkin says: "'Dearer to us the falsehood that exalts Than hosts of baser truths.'