Here is no eft or mortal snake
But only sluggish duck and drake.– T.S. Eliot, “Lines to a Duck in the Park”
Ballard to a Mallard
O mallard, sleeping ’mongst the snows!
How long I’ve longed to know thee!
For years you’ve failed to decompose;
You’ve rotted oh-so-slowly.
What is your secret, feathered friend?
Where hides your preservation?
Your feathers won’t besmirch or bend;
Your bones preserve their station.
O uncorrupted avian,
Part sun-bleached beak and tell me
What being, be it God or Man,
Had force enough to fell thee?
You slumber now along the grass
That flanks the busy four-lane—
Perhaps you came unto this pass
When some car swerved to your lane?
Those monstrous beasts of gas and gears
Churn on, unheeding of you.
The rain comes down with bitter force,
The sun shines on above you.
And every day I pass you by
And marvel at your glory.
I have to wonder, mallard mine,
About your untold story.
EPILOGUE:
Princes, here the mallard rests.
Pray do not awake her.
Rain shall wash her feathered breasts,
Sun shall burn and bake her.
She shall nap here till the Lord
Rises from his own bed,
And the trumpeter swan’s chord
Sounds to make her un-dead.
We shall come to hear her speak—
Hearken to her quackening!
We shall hear from her own beak
How she kept from blackening.
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