“Pythagoras argued that the souls of poets pass not from this world
but lodge themselves in the breastwork of swans.

Let it be, then. Let some of us withdraw to the keel-shaped bones
to the tilted orrery of the thorax. But I think: if poets coalesce as swans
we're mostly in the feet of swans, black as drums

pressing our rageful webbing into the earth's flank.”