Poet of the Month - James Merrill

I mentioned in a previous post that "Charles on Fire" by James Merrill is my favorite poem. Therefore, he gets to be my poet of the month. Dundundundaaah.
So I looked at some of his poems. And some are quite nice and others were not as appealing. But I liked "The Black Swan." I think it's interesting, a living question. It's something that's intangible, sad, and beautiful. But the great thing about it is even if you don't "get it," you can just sit back and let the words wash over you. 

The Black Swan

Black on flat water past the jonquil lawns

       Riding, the black swan draws

A private chaos warbling in its wake,

Assuming, like a fourth dimension, splendor   

That calls the child with white ideas of swans   

       Nearer to that green lake

    Where every paradox means wonder.

Though the black swan’s arched neck is like   

       A question-mark on the lake,

The swan outlaws all possible questioning:   

A thing in itself, like love, like submarine   

Disaster, or the first sound when we wake;

       And the swan-song it sings

    Is the huge silence of the swan.

Illusion: the black swan knows how to break   

       Through expectation, beak

Aimed now at its own breast, now at its image,   

And move across our lives, if the lake is life,   

And by the gentlest turning of its neck

       Transform, in time, time’s damage;

    To less than a black plume, time’s grief.

Enchanter: the black swan has learned to enter   

       Sorrow’s lost secret center

Where like a maypole separate tragedies

Are wound about a tower of ribbons, and where   

The central hollowness is that pure winter

       That does not change but is

    Always brilliant ice and air.

Always the black swan moves on the lake; always

       The blond child stands to gaze   

As the tall emblem pivots and rides out

To the opposite side, always. The child upon   

The bank, hands full of difficult marvels, stays

       Forever to cry aloud

    In anguish: I love the black swan.