After a day spent incognito with her at the Montmartre fair, just before her parents' divorce and her fifth birthday, E. E. Cummings wrote in his notebook: goodbye dear & next time when I feel a little better we'll ride on the donkeys and next time on the pigs maybe or you will a bicycle and i will ride a swan & next time when my heart is all mended again with snow repainted with bright new paint we'll ride you and I She wanted to ride the swan.