after Rilke

 

Making our way laboriously through lists

of things to do, complexities that ensnare us,

we are like the shambling swan –

 

until, dying, we lose all purchase

on terra firma, slipping away like the swan,

as he settles, at first uncertainly,

 

into the water that buoys him,

and flows on blithely in endless ripples,

while he, so still and self-assured

 

in the achievement

of majesty, deigns to drift,

untrammelled, where the current takes him.

 

 

First published in Ambit 2012