ONE morning during Carnival they found two swans in the Public Garden, their long necks twisted, two swans lying splendidly dead under a magnolia not yet in blossom and nobody ever knew why they were killed, whether it was a drunkard, whether an old man tired of women's bodies and wishing thus to destroy a more impeccable beauty, or was he young (over them bends a domino, black with white moons for buttons, while the sky like a domino bends more vastly over). It was a crime of passion; if I have read of other passionate crimes in curtained alcoves, knife or poison, they were less splendid than these two dead swans, O less magnificent than the formal pool, empty without them, this empty pool which stares fixedly into a fixed and empty sky. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 18 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING WARREN'S ADDRESS [TO THE AMERICANS] [AT BUNKER HILL] [JUNE 17, 1775] by JOHN PIERPONT THE HOUSE OF LIFE: 78. BODY'S BEAUTY by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI FALSE LOVE AND TRUE LOGIC by SAMUEL LAMAN BLANCHARD HUNTER'S MOON by ELIZABETH BROWN (AMERICAN) GRACE AFTER MEAT (3) by ROBERT BURNS |