<!DOCTYPE html> <!-- Template for compiled 'Autocento' documents --> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="generator" content="pandoc"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes"> <meta name="author" content="Case Duckworth"> <!-- more meta tags here --> <title>Swansong | Autocento of the breakfast table</title> <!-- general styles & scripts --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./css/common.css"> <script src="./js/lozenge.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script src="./js/hylo.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./css/verse.css"> <script src="./js/verse.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="./css/autocento.css"> <script src="./js/autocento.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script> <![endif]--> <!-- <script src="js/external.js"> </script> --> </head> <body> <article id="container"> <header> <!-- title --> <h1 class="title">Swansong</h1> <h1 class="subtitle">alternate version</h1> </header> <section class="content verse"> <p>This poem is dry like <a href="time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html">chapped lips</a>.<br /><a href="no-nothing.html">It is hard as teeth</a>—hear the tapping?<br />It is the swan song of beauty, as all<br />swan songs are. <a href="poetry-time.html">Reading</a> it, you are<br />puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed.<br />Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing.<br />A honking over the cliff is all<br />they can do, and that they do<br />badly. You don’t know where I’m going.<br />You want to tell me, <a href="about-the-author.html">You are not you</a>.<br /><a href="swansong.html">You are the air the swan walks on.</a><br />You are the fringe of the curtain<br /><a href="elegyforanalternateself.html">that separates me from you</a>. I say<br />that you are no longer the temple,<br />that you have been through <a href="fire.html">fire</a><br />and are now less than ash. You are<br />the subtraction of yourself from<br />the world, <a href="finding-the-lion.html">the air without a swan</a>.<br />Together, we are each other. You<br />and I have both nothing and everything<br />at once, we own the world and nothing in it.</p> </section> </article> <nav> <a href="#" id="lozenge" title="Random page"> ◊ </a> </nav> </body> </html>