Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s "Black Swan" is a hauntingly lyrical exploration of motherhood, memory, and the interplay of beauty and pain. Rooted in mythic imagery and surreal storytelling, the poem blends elements of fable and dream to probe the emotional weight of creation and the enduring ache of loss and misunderstanding.

The speaker begins by recounting a fantastical tale told to the boy—an origin story that frames his existence in terms of magic and mystery. She claims to have found him under a bush in a strange, otherworldly garden, where he slept intertwined with a black swan, their breathing synchronized as one. This fabricated narrative sets a tone of reverence and intimacy, imbuing the boy’s beginnings with an almost sacred significance. The garden itself, described as "so old it seemed to exist outside of time," serves as a metaphorical space of origin and wonder. The imagery—statues of horsemen, triangular and circular flower beds, cries of small birds—conjures a sense of enchantment, a place that feels both idyllic and faintly foreboding.

The black swan becomes a central symbol, embodying dualities: beauty and danger, grace and wildness, warmth and detachment. Its "hot feathers" and "moist neck" suggest a visceral, almost primal closeness, while its eventual disappearance underscores the fragility of this connection. The act of the speaker slipping the boy "into my belly, / The way one might slip something stolen / Into a purse," evokes themes of possession, nurture, and the uneasy boundaries between creation and appropriation. This intimate yet unsettling gesture blurs the lines between love and control, sacrifice and theft.

The boy, now older, reintroduces a note of disquiet when he expresses anger and despair at being taunted by other boys. His wish to return "under the bush" introduces a longing for the mythical safety and unity that the speaker once described. This wish—born of frustration with the harsh realities of the external world—rekindles the speaker’s memories of the strange garden, but her recollection is now shadowed by loss. The black swan, once a vivid and central presence, is conspicuously absent in her vision, signaling a severance from the magic that once defined her bond with the boy.

The poem’s closing lines deepen this sense of estrangement and disillusionment. The garden, though still beautiful, takes on an ominous tone: “dark and low” sounds of stone hooves reverberate, hinting at an impending rupture or the hardening of something once fluid and alive. The absence of the swan underscores the limitations of the speaker’s constructed narrative, her inability to shield the boy from the pain of existence or to sustain the mythic unity they once shared.

Throughout the poem, Kelly employs richly layered imagery and rhythmic cadences to evoke the tension between the ephemeral and the eternal, the sacred and the mundane. The garden and its creatures symbolize the speaker’s longing to create and preserve a world of beauty and protection for the boy, even as time and external forces erode that vision. The swan, with its symbolic associations of transformation and mystery, becomes a poignant emblem of what is fleeting and irrevocably lost.

"Black Swan" is ultimately a meditation on the complexities of love, creation, and the passage of time. It reflects on the impossibility of preserving innocence and unity in a world where beauty is shadowed by pain and memory is marked by absence. Kelly’s language—sensuous, vivid, and steeped in myth—draws readers into this liminal space, where the boundaries between the real and the imagined blur, leaving us to grapple with the profound ache of loss and the fragile beauty of what remains.

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