The Black Swan
By James Merrill
Published 1951 in “First Poems”
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 that green lake
Where every paradox means wonder.
(more)
Although the black neck arches not unlike
A question mark on the lake,
The swan outlaws all easy questioning:
A thing in itself, equivocal, foreknown,
Like pain, or women singing as 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 May fête, separate tragedies
Are wound in ribbons round the pole to share
A hollowness, a marrow of pure winter
That does not change but is
Always brilliant ice and air.
Always the black swan moves on the lake. Always
The moment comes to gaze
As the tall emblem pivots and rides out
To the opposite side, always. The blond child on
The bank, hands full of difficult marvels, stays
Now in bliss, now in doubt.
His lips move: I love the black swan.
As a rule, let's post short biographies of poets as the first comment after a poem, shall we? Here I go:
James Merrill, b. 1926 in New York City, was the son of Charles Merrill, co-founder of very well-known Merrill-Lynch Brokers (whom my dad worked for once upon a time). Merrill was already writing poems by the age of eight, and by 16 had a small book privately printed courtesy of his father.
His schooling included prep-school before he attended Amherst College, where he met Robert Frost, but was briefly interrupted by Army service between 1944-45. A lot of biographies stress his growing up in wealth, and how that affected or didn't affect his writing, which turned out to be plentiful. For further biography, from which I paraphrased, check
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C040708 .
I will hopefully follow soon with my first comments about why I posted this particular poem and what it has to offer to readers.
--Ted
Posted by: daleth at January 26, 2004 02:41 PM