<!DOCTYPE html> <!-- AUTOCENTO OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE --> <!-- vim: fdm=indent --> <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"> <title>Swansong | Autocento of the breakfast table</title> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="trunk/favico.png" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="trunk/style.css"> <script src="scripts/randomize.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script src="scripts/hylo.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="http://html5shim.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"> </script> <![endif]--> </head> <body id="swansong-alt" class="autocento"> <article class="container"> <header> <!-- title --> <h1 class="title">Swansong</h1> <h1 class="subtitle">alternate version</h1> <div class="header-extra"> </div> </header> <section class="content verse"> <p><span class="line">This poem is dry like <a href="time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html">chapped lips</a>.</span><span class="line"><a href="no-nothing.html">It is hard as teeth</a>—hear the tapping?</span><span class="line">It is the swan song of beauty, as all</span><span class="line">swan songs are. <a href="poetry-time.html">Reading</a> it, you are</span><span class="line">puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed.</span><span class="line">Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing.</span><span class="line">A honking over the cliff is all</span><span class="line">they can do, and that they do</span><span class="line">badly. You don’t know where I’m going.</span><span class="line">You want to tell me, <a href="about-the-author.html">You are not you</a>.</span><span class="line"><a href="swansong.html">You are the air the swan walks on.</a></span><span class="line">You are the fringe of the curtain</span><span class="line"><a href="elegyforanalternateself.html">that separates me from you</a>. I say</span><span class="line">that you are no longer the temple,</span><span class="line">that you have been through <a href="fire.html">fire</a></span><span class="line">and are now less than ash. You are</span><span class="line">the subtraction of yourself from</span><span class="line">the world, <a href="finding-the-lion.html">the air without a swan</a>.</span><span class="line">Together, we are each other. You</span><span class="line">and I have both nothing and everything</span><span class="line">at once, we own the world and nothing in it.</span></p> </section> </article> <a id="textlink" title="Source file" href="text/swansong-alt.txt">¶</a> <nav> <div class="anchors"> <a href="backlinks/swansong-alt.html" id="backlinks" title="Links to this page"> φ </a> <a href="index.html" id="coverlink" title="To cover">◊</a> <a href="#" id="randomizelink" title="ERROR">ξ</a> </div> </nav> </body> </html>