Issam Zineh

Swans & Doves

There was a deity named Anteros, who was sometimes represented as the
avenger of slighted love, and sometimes as the symbol of reciprocal
affection.
—from The Age of Fable – Thomas Bullfinch


On the Madison River, winter
is a hideous act. The trumpeter swans

furl and un-, extend like periscopes,
and take to water as nature’s perennial myth.

The sun comes up like an artist into
his wife; a palette knife that spreads

the willful legs of sky, commits to a crisis
of color without question or quarrel.

We will not argue, today. We will not
hurt each other. And while we are at it,

we will change all our symbols, as in: swan
to cock and cunt, simultaneous; sun

to all we know of ourselves. We are one
and the same in one sense: ill-prepared

for love, custom-made for the opposite.
This is the way it is, just like a dove is

a white pigeon and white is absence.
The way hope is animal innocence.

How, once in a while in your apartment,
you see happiness as a man in a T-shirt,

then see, again, yourself away in some grove
or grotto where a stranger is in bloom,

between his thighs, roses; yours, myrtle.