++Leda+and+the+Swan.jpg)
Jacopo Pontormo
Leda and the Swan
Francois Boucher
Leda and the Swan
Leda
“Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”
Not even for a moment. He knew, for one thing, what he was.
When he saw the swan in her eyes he could let her drop.
In the first look of love men find their great disguise,
and collecting these rare pictures of himself was his life.
Her body became the consequence of his juice,
while her mind close on a bird and went to sleep.
Later, with the children in school, she opened her eyes
and saw her own openness, and felt relief.
In men’s stories her life ended with his loss.
She stiffened under the storm of his wings to a glassy shape,
stricken and mysterious and immortal. But the fact is,
she was not, for such an ending, abstract enough.
She tried for a while to understand what it was
that had happened, and then decided to let it drop.
She married a smaller man with a beaky nose,
and melted away in the storm of everyday life.
“Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”
Not even for a moment. He knew, for one thing, what he was.
When he saw the swan in her eyes he could let her drop.
In the first look of love men find their great disguise,
and collecting these rare pictures of himself was his life.
Her body became the consequence of his juice,
while her mind close on a bird and went to sleep.
Later, with the children in school, she opened her eyes
and saw her own openness, and felt relief.
In men’s stories her life ended with his loss.
She stiffened under the storm of his wings to a glassy shape,
stricken and mysterious and immortal. But the fact is,
she was not, for such an ending, abstract enough.
She tried for a while to understand what it was
that had happened, and then decided to let it drop.
She married a smaller man with a beaky nose,
and melted away in the storm of everyday life.
~ Mona Van Duyn ~
