Simple Symmetry

He was neither on stage nor in the wings, not in the audience nor in the building at all. Finally the stage door opened and he came on through. He stopped by a dressing room, then headed for the stage to play his part. Later, when he left, the building filled with his absence again, the same absence that had permeated each nook and crack before he came in: the before and after a simple symmetry of his not being there on the scene at all. Like a common song, an ABA form---or just the middle part, with silence at either end. You are the music while the music lasts, says T.S. Eliot. Then the recapitulation of the lengthy prelude of the original silence.