I found "Black Swan" really interesting, especially since it's a story of birth. What I gather from the poem is that this is what the speaker told her son when he asked where he came from--instead of explaining "the birds and the bees," the speaker chose to tell him she found him curled around a black swan "in a strange garden, a place so old it seemed to exist outside of time." (This line seems like it's probably referencing the Garden of Eden, but someone else can cover that, if they want.)
What I was most interested in was what black swans might have to do with birth in folklore, and after some googling, it seems like the answer is "probably nothing." Swans are found in mythology in many cultures (for example, we've already covered Leda and the swan), but I wasn't really able to find myths specifically involving black swans and birth.
As such, I found it pretty weird that the poet chose to specifically use a black swan, especially when our culture already has the whole "storks bring babies" idea. In this case, instead of a large bird flying to her and bringing her a bird, the speaker tells her child that she "found him under a bush [...] And that a black swan slept beside him". Do you think that Kelly was trying to play off of that idea with a different bird?
I was also struck by this image of a black swan. It is interesting to me that the image of the black swan existed prior to the discovery of the creature itself. One could argue that the meaning of such a symbol might be diminished or all together lost by the discovery of the real, material, thing. In the poem, the black swan is part of a story that the mother tells her son to explain the miracle of his existence. The black swan adds mysticism and magic to the story in order to cover up the details that the mother does not want to share or would like to spare her child from. In this story, the Garden is a metaphor for life and all the wonder and horror that entails. The mother hopes to help the child live life in a better way by creating a myth that adds magic to life and in the process becomes persuaded of the myth herself. She says that she forgot she had even told him the story until he tugs at her sleeve, wishing he had never been born and that he was “back under the bush.” This reminder brings her back to the garden except this time, “there is no swan.” There is no longer the same magical quality to the garden to disguise the gross details. The boy, I think, is supposed to be an symbol for Christ. If we were to actually discover the living (or dead) material body of Christ, we would be left without the myths and mysticism that make it possible to symbolically mediate our relationship to the world.
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