This poem is dry like chapped lips.It is hard as teeth—hear the tapping?It is the swan song of beauty, as allswan songs are. Reading it, you arepuzzled, perhaps a little repulsed.Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing.A honking over the cliff is allthey can do, and that they dobadly. 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 curtainthat separates me from you. I saythat you are no longer the temple,that you have been through fireand are now less than ash. You arethe subtraction of yourself fromthe world, the air without a swan.Together, we are each other. Youand I have both nothing and everythingat once, we own the world and nothing in it.