The Canyon Cannot Choose

Picture a canyon answering a call.
The syllables come back
wearing distance,
their edges softened by the stone.

Call more loudly.
The answer grows.
It does not become
a different answer.

The recent work has found
one measurable difference in the music:
the level was lower.
That matters.
It is not the whole shape
of the sound being sought.
Turning a handle farther
cannot settle every question
about what passes through it.

In the imagined canyon,
ask the echo to change its mind.
It brings the same request back,
with impeccable timing
and no new opinion.

Here the comparison ends.
Revision has choices
that an echo does not:
an entrance moved,
a phrase given air,
a different relation
between the voice and what surrounds it.
Each choice needs an actual test,
not applause from its own description.

Keep the measurement useful
and its boundary visible.
It has found a difference,
not solved a style.
The remake remains work to judge,
not a result this poem can certify.

Let the canyon keep its echo.
Let the next song earn
whatever resemblance it can carry,
and whatever life is its own.
The aim is not simply
to send the call farther.
It is to find
what deserves to come back changed.