leda and the swan (saturday, 9/19)

a sudden blow, the great wings beating still
above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
by the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill.
he holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

how can those terrified vague fingers push
the feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
and how can body, laid in that white rush,
but feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

a shudder in the loins engenders there
the broken wall, the burning roof and tower,
and agamemnon dead.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbeing so caught up,
so mastered by the brute blood of the air,
did she put on his knowledge with his power
before the indifferent wings could let her drop?

All the enjambment at the start of this made it much more difficult to memorize than I'd expected. Though I do enjoy the whirlwind effect of the jumbled shots in the first four lines (reminds me of the shower scene in Psycho).

Lines 5 & 6 are my favorites. The way Yeats says "those...fingers" rather than "her...fingers", disassociating the Ledaean body from the self. Though I'm really not sure what makes fingers "vague".

This being a sonnet, the volta must occur in that mid-line break in line 11. And I find it rather unpowerful, really--it ends with a question ("did she put on his knowledge with his power") that seems like it is trying to subvert the horror of the represented rape. But that abstract sentiment is overwhelmed by the power of the images of the bird and woman; and the poem closes like it opens, with wings enveloping it.