The Black Swan

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 the 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 think in itself, like love, like submarine Disaster, or the first sound we wake;     And the swan-song it sings   Is the huge silence of the swan. Illusion: the black swan knows how to break     Through expectation, beak Aimed now at its own breast, now at its image, And move across our lives, if the lake is life, And by the gentlest turning of its neck     Transform, in time, time's damage;   To less than a black plume, time's grief. Enchanter: the black swan has learned to enter     Sorrow's lost secret center Where like a maypole separate tragedies Are wound about a tower of ribbons, and where The central hollowness is that pure winter     That does not change but is   Always brilliant ice and air. Always the black swan moves n the lake; always     The blond child stands to gaze As the tall emblem pivots and rides out To the opposite side, always. The child upon The bank, hands full of difficult marvels, stays     Forever to cry aloud   In anguish: I love the black swan.