Mary Oliver’s poem, Swan, asks us if we see, hear, and feel what she does, drawing rich references to the beautiful aspects of a swan, culminating in two powerful questions.
Swan
by Mary Oliver
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air,
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting the trees,
...like a waterfall
knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds —
a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light
of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
From Swan: Poems and Prose Poems. Copyright 2010 by Mary Oliver. Published by Beacon Press.
She did tell Krista Tippett in a long interview for The On Being Podcast that “I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.”
The questions that Mary Oliver asks her readers at the end of the Swan poem remind me of the one she asks at the end of The Summer Day (aka “The Grasshopper”).
See this remembrance of Mary Oliver (1935-2019) and her astonishing poetry, with links to articles, interviews, and readings, as well as several of her favorite poems I’ve loved and posted over the years.
— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.
The Uncarved Blog 