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On Passing

Eamon Grennan

Six swans fly low over the village to the lake

as day turns cloudy again, rain coming: ponderous

bodies in flight, they seem to fling themselves

along a polished corridor of air, swerve on a curve,

and disappear behind a ridge in the bog where

they spy bright water, their necks impossibly

extended to the head and blacktipped yellow bills

from which they whoop their names out, letting

the world know the marvellous single minute

of their passage—which my own heart startles at,

risen from whatever it was buried in, wanting

to stop them there, to have the whole moment

over again, and over, till the matter was known.