Michael Coy Poet Sonnet

The Swan, and Someone Replaceable

(after Charles Baudelaire)

It’s not the same.  I noticed it today,
while dodging Rond-Point carriages.
I’m not the sort who mindlessly disparages
whatever’s new, but Haussman’s swept away

the Paris that I loved.  Thus thought the swan
who’d wandered somehow from the Tuileries
and limped, bewildered, frightened, ill-at-ease,
his web feet scraping as he struggled on,

he knew not where, uncertain why his wings
were rasping in dry dust, instead of water.
Nearby, a black girl on a cast-iron bench
(advanced TB: I’ve come to know these things)
sat huddled, shy, not knowing any French, 
quite lost.  And Africa has lost a daughter.

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Darren White March 8, 2017 at 9:25 AM OK, Rimbaud and Beaudelaire, love those two. Le Cygnet. I really know not too everything about this, but I do know of course what it is, I've read parts of it in French. So don't start to think I know everything, I don't! You took a small but important part from the poem, they both can't find their way back home.... Michael Coy March 8, 2017 at 11:39 AM Precisely! And yes, Rimbaud and Baudelaire are the best!