– birds themselves, birds themselves, he descended down the scale –

poems by their brothers and sisters (bird poems) (poems by younkers), accounts of the uprising of grandfathers, the rising up of old swans, and the things that happened in the moment of them

– the moment of them, the moment of them, he shakes his head as he declaims –

and the swans, this pair, they turn to each other, these beautiful black-eyed birds, and it’s like a joke to them, a terrible sad joke, that they were born swans, and had no way of making sense of any of it. For swans cannot read, I says to my lover, and this is The Swan singing now. And my lover looks back at me, with those eyes of his, those eyes of his, as he sings, and my lover, he asks me, whether one day, when he passes, maybe he could be turned into a book. But I won’t be able to read it, my lover, my long-lost, I won’t be able to read you, my dear, is how sings, The Swan, in return.

*

Back in the flat in Kentish Town, Tommy’s chest rising and falling, and the side of his face, in the light of cigarettes, next to me, on the floor, in the dark, I’m imagining us landing on water, together, and how it is soft between our legs, 1977, and how we sail off, silent, and without a thought.

*

In a cafe in Camden Town, The Swan tells me he how he knew my da. I knew your da, he says to me. Then he just lets it sit there. He looks at me like I’m the one that’s supposed to ask him a question. But I don’t know what to ask about my da. He was some man, The Swan says to me eventually. Aye, I says to him, he was some man.

I’m for the full English, Tommy says. He’s sitting on the other side of the table, next to Blackie, drinking coffee. There are stains on his white shirt; we’ve been hiding out too long. You realise that The Full English is a euphemism? Blackie says to him. The fuck’s a euphonism? Tommy says to him.

Euphonism is Greek for lovely-sounding words, Blackie says to him. Euphemism, on the other hand, is a word for another word. Why use one word for another if you’ve already got a word for it already? Tommy says to him. Because it’s funnier, Blackie says to him, and he looks across the table and he says to us, are you sure this guy is a fucking Irishman? The Full English, Blackie says to him, means taking it up the arse. I’m talking about getting raped, by the screws, in the jail, he says.