I've seen a couple of black swans in Cambridge, better looking than
the white ones IMO.
I like swans, particularly they way they carry their cygnets, on their
backs between slightly proud wings.
This is probably an even more fatuous email than lunkheads.
Roger
On 12/9/05, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I live in Perth, a city wrapped around a river called the Swan River. We see a
> number of them - all black. The white ones are in the zoo :-)
>
> There is a great spot where Japanese tourists go, called Lake Monger. Here the
> swans waddle around among ducks, cormorants, pelicans, etc. They don't attack
> unless they have their babies nearby or the tourists annoy them in some way -
> like not paying a posing fee for snaps, etc.
>
> I will try to find a website with pics on it for you lot.
>
> Cheers -
>
> Andrew
>
> Quoting Peter Ciccariello <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > Fine one Ken.
> > (From one who was attacked by a swan on a moonless night in East
> > Hampton, Long Island and knows that sound.)
> >
> > -Peter Ciccariello
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Sent: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 15:16:02 -0500
> > Subject: Re: Poem: Love the wild swan, by Robinson Jeffers
> >
> > Stephen Vincent wrote:
> >
> > >Thanks, Joe. A good one, methinks. Makes me want to wander over to
> > Big Sur.
> > >Tho it made me wonder if 'swans' are found along this part of the
> > Pacific
> > >Coast. Of large birds, I have seen egrets, sea gulls, cormorants,
> > herons,
> > >pelicans, geese - but Swans? Hmm.
> > >Have you seen any??
> > > >
> > You bet. Not in CA, on Long Island. This: very old, presented
> > unretouched and in the ancient florid style that made me the scop of
> > Livingston, NJ.
> >
> > SWANS ON PECONIC BAY, LONG ISLAND
> >
> > The boys are terrified, immobilized:
> > the birds whiplash their necks, wings outstretched,
> > and trumpet cries beyond indignation,
> > claiming for themselves the territory
> > of Divine Wrath with the beach itself.
> > Grab the kids! my wife yells, and under each arm
> > I scoop up one, then the other, both crying:
> > for all they have known of swans is the mythic
> > vision of grace upon the water, nothing
> > to do with the natural truth before them,
> > huge web-foot birds lurching forward like drunks,
> > their bodies weapons, intending murder.
> >
> > The swans are reflections and heritage:
> > they are literary-terpsichorean beings.
> > I was 17 when I became weightless
> > in Standing Room watching Plisetskaya,
> > the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen,
> > dance Odette/Odile, feathered lady of the lake:
> > later, learned Yeats' symbology of The Swan:
> > its beauty at Coole Park, its intimations
> > of virile terror and the nightmare of History
> > filling Leda's womb. And thought: ``Such horror
> > from something so beautiful!'', beguiled still by
> > the vision of The Swan, floating, dancing en pointe.
> >
> > When we are little, look in the mirror,
> > and hate what we see, someone may read us
> > Andersen's tale of the Ugly Duckling,
> > how it grew into a swan, filled with the grace
> > of Plisetskaya or religious implication.
> > But these on the beach neither dance nor redeem.
> > They bless not, neither do they curse: they are
> > marauders assigned a role they will not live.
> > They leave the water and reject our grace,
> > renounce the role of icon: and, too stupid
> > to know they are symbols of an ideal beauty,
> > settle instead for hating what is not them.
> >
> > KTW/6-8-91
> >
> > -- Kenneth Wolman
> > Proposal Development Department
> > Room SW334
> > Sarnoff Corporation
> > 609-734-2538
> >
> > I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended
> > up where I needed to be.
> > -Douglas Adams
> >
> >
> >
>
--
http://www.badstep.net/
http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
|