Poem by George Szirtes responding to Caroline Wright's drawing Postcard (swan)

Postcard 5: The Swan’s Reflection

Cygnus

I am calligraphy. On salt marsh, on the village pond,

I write my name in arabesques. I speak white

To the cloud and the clouded water.

I am the furthest quarter

Of the starless night

And beyond.

I am breast

And wind and moon

And the sheer distance

Of constellations, the persistence

Of desire, the nebulae of systems soon

To vanish: cry and echo, curvature and rest.

Reverse side

Call now.

The phone is on mute.

There is no speech, no language

Lodged in those empty spaces, no gauge

That can measure a distance so silent and absolute

We cannot address it in words, because we don’t know how.

Listen to the street. The voices in shops, in the bus queue,

On the platform. Something curves back at us,

Some echo, arabesque, a kind of pageant,

Like the rhythms of an imagined

Language: sign, Cygnus,

Me, you.

Hattyú*

*Hattyú (Hutt-you) is Hungarian for swan.