---
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