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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 | |||
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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT EIGHTY I CHANGE MY VIEW by DAVID IGNATOW FAWN'S FOSTER-MOTHER by ROBINSON JEFFERS THE DEER LAY DOWN THEIR BONES by ROBINSON JEFFERS OLD BLACK MEN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A WINTER ODE TO THE OLD MEN OF LUMMUS PARK, / MIAMI, FLORIDA by DONALD JUSTICE AFTER A LINE BY JOHN PEALE BISHOP by DONALD JUSTICE TO HER BODY, AGAINST TIME by ROBERT KELLY |
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