Swans in Time of C19

21 May  Two months on from C19 lockdown.A wonderful early morning in Battersea Park with the appearance of the first cygnet to hatch this year.

For us regular park users the swan colony and its evolution across the seasons and the years has always had pride of place among the wild life that inhabits this historic green space near the River Thames in south London.

But with the park providing a mental and physical life-line during the C19 lock-down, the bonding, mating and hatching of these graceful birds has generated growing reverence, the crafted nest and its occupants, observed in silent contemplation by an expanding park community, as if transformed into a place of pilgrimage.

The park regulars knew something about the enduring fidelity of the two swans who were with us long before we heard of C19, knowing that they bonded before reaching sexual maturity.

In recent weeks, day in day out, park users -new and old- have found time to watch the swans selflessly share out their parental duties building their nest together, incubating the clutch of eggs over a six week period, so that while one sits, the other ventures out across the lake, in search of a diet of aquatic and submerged leaves, roots and plants when not keeping predators away to the point of attacking anything perceived to be a danger to their chicks.

As Wikipedia reminds us , Helen of Troy was conceived from the union of Zeus , disguised as a swan, and Leda Queen of Sparta, the Irish poet W.B.Yeats waxed lyrical about the swan’s mesmerising qualities, a Christian English saint Hugh of Lincoln had a swan as his most devoted follower, while Hinduism consider swans to be transcendental, their chief characteristic that of being in the world without getting attached to it, just as a swan’s feather does not get wet while it is in the water.

If the mute swan has long played a special part in popular culture and beliefs, enduring in our collective sub-consciousness , it is perhaps not that surprising that since mid-March we have found ourselves reaching out to these beloved creatures in unexpected ways so as to help us navigate the troubled waters of C19.

The habits of these swans which in their modernity and consumerism some urbanites might have tended to take for granted in the past, like so many other aspects of nature, have taken on new meaning and proved inspirational.

The swans have been a blessing, encountering them an Epiphany, or several epiphanies, in the original Greek meaning of the word as a moment of revelation.

Watching the swans, we have found ourselves taking time to pause in each other’s company, careful to maintain a social distance, and yet feeling safe while drawn together by the magnetism of their serene presence, watching their patient regeneration, -the nest building, incubation, and hatching coinciding with the lockdown, and the uncertainty surrounding the manner and outcome of a gradual relaxation.

The disruption to the life we had been used to, the suffering and the death, the dislocation and anxiety provoked by C19, has involved us in a difficult and painful journey, but the swans have helped make of our daily outing to the Park a comforting and reassuring experience.

Spending time with the swans has made me think again of that most famous of Epiphanies, the story of the three ‘wise’ men following the star to the birth of Jesus the Christ Child in Bethlehem.

As described in T.S Eliot’s poem The Journey of the Magi, it was a journey that was not without hardship and which was characterised by much uncertainty, those travelling, in the words of the poet, no longer at ease with the ‘old dispensation’ , knowing that they were experiencing a kind of death of their previous existence, and that if they lived on, their lives stood to be changed, even transformed. The swans, noble silent sentinels of the lake, somehow have been helping many of us overcome dark moments of fear and doubt. For that I celebrate the birth the cygnet as a good omen.

May 22nd And then there were three, with three more to hatch. Today a heron stands two meters away from the swan. “A Mexican stand off? “enquires my American friend Susanna, as some of us park regulars gather to observe. But there are no apparent signs of hostility, those gathered seemingly trusting and respectful, nature and humanity held in a fragile balance.