(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