"Welcome to the Hall of Canon"

 

Here, the hallway is narrow.
Its portraits hang in orderly rows—
the pastoral faces, the plainspoken men
who learned to keep their voices trimmed
to fit their frames.

Visitors walk softly, here.
They whisper the names already carved
into the lintels,
names that echo easily
because the walls 
have learnt their shadows' arcs.

Outside, other poetries waive.
Noted in absence of protest—
but carried in weather,
they're unroomed 

where ordinary light
falls on ordinary hands
doing ordinary work.

Their pages carry the soot
of kitchens,
the umbra of corridors,
that small breath of someone
standing still enough
to notice.

But, the hallway is narrow.
It prefers its familiar gait,
its well‑worn cadence,
its safe and settled lineage.

So the other poetries remain
just beyond the doorway—
procedural,
      domestic,
             unadorned,
poised in their own architectures
          without spectacle.

They won't knock.
They offer no plea.
They simply continue
to write from the places
the hallway cannot see.

And one day,
when the keepers turn
and find the corridor
      too spare,
            too subdued,
  much too uniform,

they will step outside,

   tilt their gaze,
      and discover
rooms they never considered
              were already full
        of other voices
   that had learned
to sound without amplification.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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