A Dying Swan Takes Some Sitting On

A dying swan takes some sitting on: a Cover-up on an album-cover? All’s calm on the surface; the river’s swanless, the record’s swan-songless - although not quite thongless - notice the Air on the G-String (is there a pubic h missing?), and look at the horse - he senses ‘monkey business’, he recognizes a ‘swan-wrister’ when he sees one. 

And the swan-wrister’s wife: is she hatching a swan? Or trying to conceal the fact that she’s riding a white swan? Or are we (along with the blameless horse) witnesses to a ‘cover-up’ on an album cover, in the aftermath of a swan-murder? It’s a well-known fact that a swan can break a man’s arm with one flap of its wing. That explains the limp wrist. As to the rest, like the horse, I know exactly what happened.

It’s 1973 and inspired by the T-Rex song, ‘Ride A White Swan’ (1970), the blonde in the hat does just that… as the song goes: ‘ Wear a tall hat and a tattooed gown/Ride a white swan…’ But the swan’s having none this swan song and gets into a flap. The husband comes to the rescue: grabs hold of the swan’s throat (between his wife’s legs: sex and death are closely entwined) and attempts to wring its neck. The swan flaps, the husband’s wrist snaps. At this point a photographer comes punting down the river. The couple (she, still sur la swan) compose themselves for a picture. The photographer says ‘look at the birdie’. She does, literally: look at the evil eye she’s giving the swan - the kind of guilty look you have when you are covering up – sitting on something - something that shouldn’t be sat upon. They almost got away with it, except you can just see a bit of swan’s beak, craning round the wireless, and it’s not playing hide and seek.