Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hunger to haul the white reflection down.The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
feather dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.
– Sylvia Plath,
‘Winter Landscape, with Rooks’