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+---
+title: Swansong
+subtitle: alternate version
+genre: verse
+
+id: swansong-alt
+toc: "Swan song (alternate)"
+
+project:
+    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
+    class: autocento
+...
+
+| This poem is dry like [chapped lips][].
+| [It is hard as teeth][]---hear the tapping?
+| It is the swan song of beauty, as all
+| swan songs are.  [Reading][] it, you are
+| puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed.
+| Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing.
+| A honking over the cliff is all
+| they can do, and that they do
+| badly.  You don't know where I'm going.
+| You want to tell me, [You are not you][].
+| [You are the air the swan walks on.][]
+| You are the fringe of the curtain
+| [that separates me from you][].  I say
+| that you are no longer the temple,
+| that you have been through [fire][]
+| and are now less than ash.  You are
+| the subtraction of yourself from
+| the world, [the air without a swan][].
+| Together, we are each other.  You
+| and I have both nothing and everything
+| at once, we own the world and nothing in it.
+
+[chapped lips]: time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html
+[It is hard as teeth]: no-nothing.html
+[Reading]: poetry-time.html
+[You are not you]: about-the-author.html
+[You are the air the swan walks on.]: swansong.html
+[that separates me from you]: elegyforanalternateself.html
+[fire]: fire.html
+[the air without a swan]: finding-the-lion.html