Jay Macpherson: The Swan

White-habited, the mystic Swan
Walks her rank cloister as the night draws down,
In sweet communion with her sister shade,
Matchless and unassayed.

The tower of ivory sways,
Gaze bends to mirrored gaze:
This perfect arc embraces all her days.
And when she comes to die,
The treasures of her silence patent lie:
'I am all that is and was and shall be,
My garment may no man put by.'


Only a tenuous claim to be an animal poem: this is, to state the obvious, not about actual swans. Macpherson spent much of her life as an academic in Canada, and her poetry was influenced by Northrop Frye's views on myth.