Will it be so, darling, this day’s passing
with a drunken wing tip can sweep away
the lost, hard lake where, snow haunted,
the flocks still sit in glacial ice!
What once was a swan is now mere memory
of lapsed greatness and indifference;
winter’s sterility long since froze in a yawn
lost and unable to sing a way to go on
The curved neck shudders a white agony away
for space itself inflicts what that bird won’t say
but the horrific grip on his plumes can’t shake
A phantom here by light itself assigned
stiffening in the cold dream of contempt
put on in the useless exile of the swan.
(after Mallarmé)