In this category:

    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    POETRY ARCHIVE
    Archive U-V
    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    CLASSIC POETRY
    Vivien, Renée

New on FdM

  1. ‘Il y a’ poème par Guillaume Apollinaire
  2. Eugene Field: At the Door
  3. J.H. Leopold: Ik ben een zwerver overal
  4. My window pane is broken by Lesbia Harford
  5. Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers in The National Gallery London
  6. Eugene Field: The Advertiser
  7. CROSSING BORDER – International Literature & Music Festival The Hague
  8. Expositie Adya en Otto van Rees in het Stedelijk Museum Schiedam
  9. Machinist’s Song by Lesbia Harford
  10. “Art says things that history cannot”: Beatriz González in De Pont Museum

Or see the index

All categories

  1. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (12)
  2. AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV (217)
  3. DANCE & PERFORMANCE (60)
  4. DICTIONARY OF IDEAS (180)
  5. EXHIBITION – art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc. (1,515)
  6. FICTION & NON-FICTION – books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets (3,863)
  7. FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY – classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc. (4,774)
  8. LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS – art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence (1,615)
  9. MONTAIGNE (110)
  10. MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS – invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung (54)
  11. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY – department of ravens & crows, birds of prey, riding a zebra, spring, summer, autumn, winter (184)
  12. MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST (143)
  13. MUSIC (222)
  14. NATIVE AMERICAN LIBRARY (4)
  15. PRESS & PUBLISHING (91)
  16. REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS (112)
  17. STORY ARCHIVE – olv van de veestraat, reading room, tales for fellow citizens (17)
  18. STREET POETRY (46)
  19. THEATRE (186)
  20. TOMBEAU DE LA JEUNESSE – early death: writers, poets & artists who died young (356)
  21. ULTIMATE LIBRARY – danse macabre, ex libris, grimm & co, fairy tales, art of reading, tales of mystery & imagination, sherlock holmes theatre, erotic poetry, ideal women (229)
  22. WAR & PEACE (127)
  23. WESTERN FICTION & NON-FICTION (22)
  24. · (2)

Or see the index



  1. Subscribe to new material: RSS

Renée Vivien: The Wrath of the Swan

Renée Vivien   
(1877-1909)

 

THE WRATH OF THE SWAN

One day – the small island was green and peaceful, – I went walking at random, lost in admiration of the trees and the water. Very inoffensively, – on my faith in the face of the sky! – I went walking…

And, as I contemplated the water, – I, who love and adore it! – I saw emerge from a mass of reeds, a black swan, menacing…

He swung his overly long neck to and fro, with sinuous and nearly serpentine movements…

I recalled the power of those great wings which, the easiest thing in the world, can shatter your arms…

And his red beak hissed…

Very prudently, – and vulgarly, alas! – I beat a retreat…

But oh, black swan! in all your formidability, how much I love you in your indomitable beauty!

You defended your nest, which you had a perfectly good reason to… as I, who muse in silence… as I defend with relentlessness my dreams…

 
Renée Vivien prose poem
kempis.nl poetry magazine

More in: Archive U-V, Vivien, Renée

Previous and Next Entry

« | »

Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature