The black swans that gaze at themselves,
that dive toward themselves,
dive into deep and incurable troubles.
For, they’re not filled with a light, soothing kindness
as white swans are.
If black swans
look at their lightless selves,
if they dive,
they’ll exhaust themselves and die.

As her black curse prevents her grace
from inspiring admiration,
as the shudders she causes don’t allow her to be revered,
as crowds don’t gather around to wonder at her
and no one agrees as to whether or not she’s praiseworthy;
as existing,
as persisting is no easy thing…

If a black swan is still living, she has surely learned
how to survive from her troubled mother, who died young.
By watching her mother tear herself to pieces …
By watching her mother injure her neck
trying to pretend she belonged…

If, like a word that no words describe,
a black swan rests
right in the middle of a lake,
she has surely gotten used to being a black swan.
To slowing death, to being too visible.
To remaining different
and living with this exasperating load.

A black swan can’t enjoy being a black swan.
Contrary to our expectations, she doesn’t see how extraordinary she is
at night in her dreams.
She is none of the stories made up about her.
She rests in the lake’s most desolate spot
so as not to despair over the fabricated,
coarse, rational stories;
so the words, the voices don’t reach her body.

Whereas frogs are the most insistent, the loudest
animals on earth.
They’ll cause an uproar, even about a black swan.

They came and found her, I saw it.
Bickered about her neck, her feathers,
her ominous loneliness. They questioned the how’s and why’s of her
so relentlessly that the black swan raised her wings and plunged them
into the water,
never to re-emerge.
Just as a noble, old queen
does when found traveling incognito,
she drowned, she buried herself in her own skirt.

Like every drowned black swan,
her shadow departed
even before time did.

I wanted to save her,
to bring back worldly justice. I rose and ran
around the lake, to find the shore nearest her.

Can a swan rescued from suicide still be a swan?

That the coarse, rational frogs shouldn’t win:
such was my fractured wish.

I was running so fast on the shore, eyes closed,
that I didn’t notice him until we collided.
How hadn’t I seen him till now? Unbelievable!
Was it rain that had hid him?
He must have watched me from the distant woods for quite some time.

Bull