(After Tennyson’s ‘The Dying Swan’)
In this wasting plain a
Wedge of swans
Tangle in water
So deep her eyes
In the gyring ferment
I am impotent
Warming blankets only burn
The stab
I cannot touch her
I cannot reach her
To this berth I cannot go
She writhes
White feathers
Drop around her bed
Swans wedge her in again
Swimming violently
Their bowing heads
Surface again
This churning of webbed feet
In water I cannot enter nor fathom
There is no present no past no future
Only some existence that is now and not now
She would wish to die
I would wish to die
Explicitly she does not wish to die
The room is swirling with the rotation of swans
Specters with no beauty
Shape-shifters leading to another world
No end no beginning
Still outside we hear
In thunder birds
A swirling of swallows
- by Mary Marie Dixon
United States
