The Swan

Robert Creeley

Peculiar that swan should mean a sound?
I'd thought of gods and power, and wounds.
But here in the curious quiet this one has
          settled down.

All day the barking dogs were kept at bay.
Better than dogs, a single swan, they say,
will keep all such malignant force away

and so preserve a calm, make pond a swelling
          lake--
sound through the silent grove a shattering
          spate
of resonances, jarring the mind awake.

The 2River View, 2_2 (Winter 1998)

Francesco Clemente

Francesco Clemente