Thursday, December 10, 2009

Poem of the Black Swan

Here are the first two stanzas of the poem. Somehow, a vision of the stock market comes to mind with its investing sheep and controlling bosses. The line about "questioning" is rather scary.

The Black Swan
by James Merrill

Black on flat water past the jonquil lawns
Riding, the black swan draws
A private chaos warbling in its wake,
Assuming, like a fourth dimension, splendor
That calls the child with white ideas of swans
Nearer to that green lake
Where every paradox means wonder.

Though the black swan’s arched neck is like
A question-mark on the lake,
The swan outlaws all possible questioning:
A thing in itself, like love, like submarine
Disaster, or the first sound when we wake;
And the swan-song it sings
Is the huge silence of the swan.

No comments: