Windsor Swans and Stillness
Because their silence
Broods complete in winter snow,
White swans disappear.
~ Phillip Whidden
They know themselves. They know their whiteness shines.
Perhaps they have a slight acquaintance with
The flakes that fall. The snowflake white declines
To Thames and disappears. It’s like the myth
Of swans not singing. Silence is not song
Except perhaps in poets’ minds like doom-sent Keats’.
True silence waits, more whites than darks, a throng
Of mutenesses. The Thames’ banks wrapped in sheets
Of smoothness, white as angels in their flight
When death descends, are even whiter than
The white of angels, death in glaring white,
A troubled verse that coldly does not scan.
Against the pureness of unrhythmed snow
The calmness of still swans appears to glow.
~ Phillip Whidden