WHAT WILL YOU BE WRITING/DOING WHEN THE WORLD ENDS? IWSG Post

Is 2024 the world's and your Swan Song?

As Dua Lipa wrote:

"This is not a Swan Song

but a Swan Dive.

It's a New Life."

 

What is a Swan Song anyway?

A swan song is the final performance of an actor, singer, composer, poet, or the like.

 

According to folklore, swans sing most beautifully before they die, 

and hence this phrase came to be used 

to describe someone who was leaving in style.

Leonardo da Vinci's Fable:

THE SWAN

The swan arched his supple neck towards the water and gazed at his reflection for a long time.


He understood the reason for his weariness 

and for the cold that gripped his body, making him tremble as though it were winter.

 With absolute certainty, he knew that his hour had come and that he must prepare for death.

His feathers were still as white as they had been on the first day of his life. Seasons and years had passed without a blemish appearing on his snowy plumage. 

He could go now, and his life would end in beauty.

Straightening his beautiful neck, he swam slowly and majestically beneath a willow, 

where he had been accustomed to rest in the hot weather.

It was already evening, and the sunset was touching the water of the lake with crimson and violet.

And in the great silence that was falling all around, the swan began to sing.

Never before had he found notes so full of love for all of nature, for the beauty of the heavens, the water and the earth.

His sweet song 

rang through the air, scarcely tinged with melancholy, until, softly, softly, it faded with the last traces of light on the horizon.

"It is the swan," said the fishes, the birds, and all of the beasts of the woodland and meadow.

Touched to the heart, they said:

"The swan is dying."

Each of us will have our own Swan Song.

Some of us will choose the time.

Often that time will be chosen for us.

What sunset will be our last to see?

What bird in flight will be the last to thrill us?

What book, short story, sentence

will unknowingly be our last?

Found on the poet’s desk after his death, 

“Finale” is Pablo Neruda’s final poem, 

and a love letter to his wife, Matilde. 

“It was beautiful to live/when you lived!”

Be sure to craft each new book of yours with care.

It could be your own Swan Song.

"I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul." 

- Pablo Neruda