Ravens the precise color of sorrow in good light

I love that line. This poet just got a Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.

Leda, After the Swan
by Carl Phillips

Perhaps,

in the exaggerated grace

of his weight

settling,



the wings

raised, held in

strike-or-embrace

position,



I recognized

something more

than swan, I can't say.



There was just

this barely defined

shoulder, whose feathers

came away in my hands,



and the bit of world

left beyond it, coming down



to the heat-crippled field,



ravens the precise color of

sorrow in good light, neither

black nor blue, like fallen

stitches upon it,



and the hour forever,

it seemed, half-stepping

its way elsewhere--



then

everything, I

remember, began

happening more quickly.