Leda, After The Swan Poem by Carl Phillips

Leda, After The Swan

Rating: 5.0


Perhaps,
in the exaggerated grace
of his weight
settling,

the wings
raised, held in
strike-or-embrace
position,

I recognized
something more
than swan, I can't say.

There was just
this barely defined
shoulder, whose feathers
came away in my hands,

and the bit of world
left beyond it, coming down

to the heat-crippled field,

ravens the precise color of
sorrow in good light, neither
black nor blue, like fallen
stitches upon it,

and the hour forever,
it seemed, half-stepping
its way elsewhere--

then
everything, I
remember, began
happening more quickly.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Allen Hagar 08 March 2019

Excellent. Evocative of Yeats as a man & the Swan as a God. Zeus. The happening quickly rings so often. The molt of feathers suggesting self-awareness for the young reader, a position of truth & assessment honest for the one aware of his & her history. Black & white as the raven is blue too. Yes, so true, so very accurate, acute (not cute) but an acute eye & especially the ear. Van Gogh. Sunflowers. No Fear. ABH-TJr.

0 2 Reply
David Gerardino 25 December 2005

GREAT POEM, did you put out a book of poems called, THE REST OF LOVE?

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