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Sanda Iliescu Images | Images 2 | Images 3 | Images 4 | Images 5 | Images 6 Swallows, 1995 To watch a swallow sweep above one's head is to receive the sharp, sudden sensation of a point slicing the air, tracing an infinitely brief line. Dense flocks of swallows produce a dizzying accumulation of these lines. Often, the flight of each bird seems wanton, unrelated to the others. Yet during early evenings when flocks thin out, patterns emerge: one swallow mirrors exactly the flight of another; two birds describe precisely parallel arcs. Each spring, hundreds of swallows overtake the courtyard of the American Academy in Rome. I watched them and sketched the lines they traced across the court: the shallow arcs and tight loops, the swift crisscrossing and swirling. Watching was exhausting to the eye. I was not surprised to find that the ancient Romans associated swallows with eyesight. In De Medicamentis, Marcellus writes: ... When you see your first swallow, immediately run without speaking to a spring and drench your eyes with water; ask god that you have no eye aches for the year, and that swallows carry away any pain in your eyes.
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