Das Jahr kennt seinen letzten Tag, der Mensch nicht.

Rana Pipiens posted a photo:

This is the swan weather vane atop the tower of the Lutheran church of Leer, Lower Saxony, Germany, near the Dutch border at the confluence of the Leda - yes! and who would not remember the Zeus myth - and Ems rivers. The church was built in 1675. It's clearly a remembrance of things past - the old Catholic faith at Leer had made way for the new Protestant - for the church was built from the bricks and stones of the destroyed monastery of Benedictine nuns just to the north of Leer: the Kloster Thedinga, dedicated to John the Baptist, which dated from 1283 but had fallen into disrepair and seen a fatal decrease in vocations after 1573.
The Swan is the signal bird of Lutheranism. It is a symbol of Martin Luther, and goes back on the words of the Bohemian 'reformer before the Reformation', Jan Hus (1370-1415). He was put to the stake for his faith and is reputed to have said: 'You are now burning a goose (- the meanng of his name -) but in the next century you will have a swan which can neither be roasted nor boiled'. And, indeed, in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses, thus beginning the Reformation. He referred to himself as the swan whom Hus had foretold. Of course, this again reminds us, too, of Hus as a kind of John the Baptist.
The 'Remembrance of Things Past' is a reference to Marcel Proust (1871-1922). A main character in that momentous work is M. Swann (!), in his extreme lethargy the very antipode of Luther.
Still contemplating on that golden swan stuck so unnaturally high against the blue, I recalled Charles Baudelaire’s (1821-1867) ‘Le Cygne’ in Les Fleurs du Mal. He tells of seeing a swan wander nervously on the dry city sidewalks of Paris. It longs for water, for rain and thunder, and raises its neck convulsively ‘Vers le ciel ironique et cruellement bleu /…/ Comme s’il adressait des reproches à Dieu!’
But I was happy with my bright morning in Leer after all the rain of earlier days!