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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TWO SWANS, by MALCOLM COWLEY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: One morning during carnival they found two
Last Line: Fixedly into a fixed and empty sky.
Subject(s): Birds; Nature; Old Age
First Line: One morning during carnival they found two
Last Line: Fixedly into a fixed and empty sky.
Subject(s): Birds; Nature; Old Age
ONE morning during Carnival they found two swans in the
Public Garden, their long necks twisted, two swans lying
splendidly dead under a magnolia
not yet in blossom and nobody ever knew why they were
killed, whether it was a drunkard, whether an old man
tired of women's bodies and wishing thus to destroy
a more impeccable beauty, or was he young (over them bends
a domino, black with white moons for buttons, while the
sky like a domino bends more vastly over).
It was a crime of passion; if I have read
of other passionate crimes in curtained alcoves,
knife or poison, they were less splendid than these two
dead swans, O less magnificent than the formal pool,
empty without them, this empty pool which stares
fixedly into a fixed and empty sky.
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