The white swan is always there, even in the Great War, especially in the Great War, the white swan is swimming, on a river that they will never reach, those who die and those who return, at the far end of what happened to them, the white swan that will never die. With her long white neck, with her curiosity fishing among the canisters for clean water, where a house will be growing and the little children will be running, and the grey lark rising above distant chimneys.
* The White Swan is the title of a Gaelic love song about the First World War.