---
title: Swan song
genre: verse

id: swansong
toc: "Swan song"

project:
    title: Elegies for alternate selves
    class: elegies
    order: 24
    prev:
    - title: The squirrel
      link: squirrel
    next:
    - title: Telemarketer
      link: telemarketer
...

| Swans fly overhead singing goodbye
| to we [walkers of the earth][ithappened].  You point
| to them in formation, you tell me
| you are not you. [You are the air the swans][alt]
| walk on as they journey like pilgrims
| to a temple in the south.  A curtain
| there separates me from you, swans
| from the air they fly through.  I say
| that you are no longer the temple,
| that you have been through fire
| and are now less than ash.  You are
| a [mirror][] of me, the [air without a swan][trumpet].
| Together, we are each other.  You
| and I have both nothing and everything
| at once.  We own the world and nothing in it.

[ithappened]: howithappened.html
[mirror]: moongone.html
[trumpet]: deathstrumpet.html
[alt]: swansong-alt.html