http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
This poem first appeared on the blog in June 2009 and several readers wrote in to say they have never seen a black swan. Well, I can assure you they exist. There is a pair of black swans in the Regent’s Park here in London UK and quite near to where I live.
The poem, of course, has precious little to do with black swans …
THE BLACK SWAN
Once, a tree as if lit by candles
in the middle of the day,
sunshine lighting its every leaf
above where we lay;
his skin like black swansdown,
full lips demanding of mine,
a heady sexuality toasting Apollo
in summer wine
Passion spent, we dared dream
of a lifetime together
till he woke to the bitter-sweet
reality of ties and culture;
he’d married a woman for whom
he felt a love very different
than he swore to me, transcended,
as if heaven sent
Like candles snuffed out by clouds
across the sun,
we dared linger but as gods of myth
come and gone,
a dream never really ours to share
(staying together, growing old)
passing us like the hands on a clock
of white gold
A summer rain soaking us through
to love’s eternal glimmer,
we rose, kissed and walked away…
but not together;
years on, I pointed out the same tree
to a friend, its candles lit
by a lake where we saw a black swan
gliding, in peace, with its mate
[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]
This poem first appeared on the blog in June 2009 and several readers wrote in to say they have never seen a black swan. Well, I can assure you they exist. There is a pair of black swans in the Regent’s Park here in London UK and quite near to where I live.
The poem, of course, has precious little to do with black swans …
THE BLACK SWAN
Once, a tree as if lit by candles
in the middle of the day,
sunshine lighting its every leaf
above where we lay;
his skin like black swansdown,
full lips demanding of mine,
a heady sexuality toasting Apollo
in summer wine
Passion spent, we dared dream
of a lifetime together
till he woke to the bitter-sweet
reality of ties and culture;
he’d married a woman for whom
he felt a love very different
than he swore to me, transcended,
as if heaven sent
Like candles snuffed out by clouds
across the sun,
we dared linger but as gods of myth
come and gone,
a dream never really ours to share
(staying together, growing old)
passing us like the hands on a clock
of white gold
A summer rain soaking us through
to love’s eternal glimmer,
we rose, kissed and walked away…
but not together;
years on, I pointed out the same tree
to a friend, its candles lit
by a lake where we saw a black swan
gliding, in peace, with its mate
[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]
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