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/Cent mille de facts

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)

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