Andromache, who fed the river with your tears <br />and saw your widow's grief mirrored in the flood, <br />It's you this mock-Simois reminds me of <br />Meandering along the <br /> <br />Just completed square- <br />Whoa! and my brain reels with memories. <br />The city that we knew is gone-alas, the plan <br />Of a town changes faster than the mind of a man! <br /> <br />Here there was a barracks of military men, <br />There, by those trees, a big-top and some tents, <br />Puddles where lawns and lawns where puddles, weren't, <br />All in a likeable crazy-quilt; <br /> <br />And over there-was a zoo: <br />One morning, as the day came on, I saw <br />Under a sky dumb and cold-bare- <br />Blown clean by chastening winds <br /> <br />A swan that, escaping its hut, <br />Drily padded the crushed stone, <br />Its gorgeous plumes trailing the ground, <br />To slip into a waterless rut; <br /> <br />Where, nervously dipping its wings in the dust, <br />(Recalling some primordial bay?) it <br />Opened its beak to the sky and brayed <br />'When will you rain, oh rain! Oh, thunder, when sound! '. <br /> <br />Sometimes, the heavens fatally blue, <br />I see it again, that fateful swan- <br />Again, I hear its broken-hearted cry <br />Sung to an infinitely empty sky.<br /><br />Morgan Michaels<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-swan-to-victor-hugo/
