---
title: Swansong
subtitle: alternate version
genre: verse

project:
    title: Autocento of the breakfast table
    css: 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