On Leda and the Swan

i. Leda: introduction



Below you below it, this is how she parades on each heat-
crippled field dappled not in shadow, but in sun:
as if a swan, whose wings ascend,
descend,

come away and away in ledaean white,
her feet going, oh how her feet goes
brush/ fail brush/fail in the wind.



ii. Zeus: watching


You watch her from above, already having decided
how fair a swan-form would be. (How lovely still
she is.) What she is, who she is, what does that matter
before seduction?


iii. Leda and the Swan: yearning


Here, on all-dappled field, she in unmoving as a sound
(can it be: wings unbroken, soft, in the air?) severs
the silence. She looks up, she tilts her head to the sky.
How she stare
at you in swan-form, all-white descending

from sky and from them, from all things expected,
half-expected. Part of your point to find,

to damp on someone else your hunger.

How her body shake when you land beside her.