Four poems by JOSEPH FASANO
Child Trapped in a Barn Crypt
First the breathless flight
from the village, the whip's
small script on your tongue. Then stench,
then rest, then silence. You'd not thought
such spectacle persisted: thick wool
shifting in darkness, each beast
to its own monk's cell. It was winter, then
winter, then winter. Remember the door
cast open, owl-song
swirling above you, brittle
as an orphan's dominion?
How you crouched in a piss-laden
cellar, while the blade's hymn
whispered for more? Moon-
stone, strong-
box, psalter: You will wait here
alone, into hunger, where the floor's
good granite
surrendered, in the crook
of your cold-stone
hollow, in the ghosts
of the arms of the poor:
the lamb's blood thick
on your jaw now, where the wind's
wild hand
still lays it, saying taste
and see, and surrender,
as though filth were the brilliance's door.
10 The Paris-American
First the breathless flight
from the village, the whip's
small script on your tongue. Then stench,
then rest, then silence. You'd not thought
such spectacle persisted: thick wool
shifting in darkness, each beast
to its own monk's cell. It was winter, then
winter, then winter. Remember the door
cast open, owl-song
swirling above you, brittle
as an orphan's dominion?
How you crouched in a piss-laden
cellar, while the blade's hymn
whispered for more? Moon-
stone, strong-
box, psalter: You will wait here
alone, into hunger, where the floor's
good granite
surrendered, in the crook
of your cold-stone
hollow, in the ghosts
of the arms of the poor:
the lamb's blood thick
on your jaw now, where the wind's
wild hand
still lays it, saying taste
and see, and surrender,
as though filth were the brilliance's door.
10 The Paris-American
Inheritance
The wind tonight is a mere
savant in the throes
of his deep prayer again and you are here, still,
when I drift in,
a small bowl
in my hands like the nest
of some unfledged darkness, your own
bread's odor in my clothes.
Take this, woman, and eat
it, the moon's coins uncounted
around you, the light
laid up like hornet's
gold, shimmering in your best black wool.
Surrender? Surrender
is nothing,
the negligible music of a dressage harness.
Let the wind's hands
riffle these hymnals, their script
like flocks under pasture
ice, their own wings
shrouding their croon.
It is only your son
come homeward
to lift up your long hair
from moonlight
like the hem of a mooring rope,
broken, to fold down
your own hands forever.
It is only the wind and the holding
fast--the wind and the rest of it, soon.
11 The Paris-American
The wind tonight is a mere
savant in the throes
of his deep prayer again and you are here, still,
when I drift in,
a small bowl
in my hands like the nest
of some unfledged darkness, your own
bread's odor in my clothes.
Take this, woman, and eat
it, the moon's coins uncounted
around you, the light
laid up like hornet's
gold, shimmering in your best black wool.
Surrender? Surrender
is nothing,
the negligible music of a dressage harness.
Let the wind's hands
riffle these hymnals, their script
like flocks under pasture
ice, their own wings
shrouding their croon.
It is only your son
come homeward
to lift up your long hair
from moonlight
like the hem of a mooring rope,
broken, to fold down
your own hands forever.
It is only the wind and the holding
fast--the wind and the rest of it, soon.
11 The Paris-American
Vigil
I remember the years of our slumber. Someone
had wounded you, and you could not say.
A young man hung above you, in briar.
Years happened. Fire. The wind blew the walls
away. I drifted
in a spruce wood, bluebells matting
the acres. Go to Spain, you
said. I went to Spain. The sea
was white where I traveled. Milk-deep. Brimming
with opal. I smelled the darkening
pines of a mooring, the ripening
cliffs of another. Something was rising
from the fathoms. I thought of rooms at the edge
of a pasture, hornets
dismantling their rafters. Of a dark wave rising
from your body, its music
in my hands, no harbor.
Of the wind, of the word
of your hours, its hand clasped over
its whisper, like a monk in a shattering
cloister. Of the horrible Archer
in the star-lanes, laying his bow
on my whisper.
Of his strength. Of the taste
of his armor. He was No One. He was never
our father.
He was going to shoot me out farther
where I could visit you no more.
12 The Paris-American
I remember the years of our slumber. Someone
had wounded you, and you could not say.
A young man hung above you, in briar.
Years happened. Fire. The wind blew the walls
away. I drifted
in a spruce wood, bluebells matting
the acres. Go to Spain, you
said. I went to Spain. The sea
was white where I traveled. Milk-deep. Brimming
with opal. I smelled the darkening
pines of a mooring, the ripening
cliffs of another. Something was rising
from the fathoms. I thought of rooms at the edge
of a pasture, hornets
dismantling their rafters. Of a dark wave rising
from your body, its music
in my hands, no harbor.
Of the wind, of the word
of your hours, its hand clasped over
its whisper, like a monk in a shattering
cloister. Of the horrible Archer
in the star-lanes, laying his bow
on my whisper.
Of his strength. Of the taste
of his armor. He was No One. He was never
our father.
He was going to shoot me out farther
where I could visit you no more.
12 The Paris-American
Solstice
Like the Dutchman who hacked out
a 2,000-page treatise on the soul
of bees, I was doing my work:
Autumn. Winter. I was trying to love
the story of the composer
who carried his frail mother from their burning house
at Wolfsgarten, then stood
in a scherzo of blizzard
until she perished of bitterness for this world.
I was trying to hold
the feral face of the possum
like the wild boy of Avignon, moving its slow
lips that would not end.
I was Leviticus. I was Revelation. I was
the child excavated from the battlefield at
Agincourt, then hanged
a second time,
moths in the moonlight of her forearms.
One night
I will whisper it, in toto: how I discovered
a river
like a suitor, abandoned
my dead to its vigil. How obsession
wore his silk-red
kimono, his wine-dark
mouth at my table.
How I was neither
the falcon nor falconer,
the singer the singing
nor song.
13 The Paris-American
Like the Dutchman who hacked out
a 2,000-page treatise on the soul
of bees, I was doing my work:
Autumn. Winter. I was trying to love
the story of the composer
who carried his frail mother from their burning house
at Wolfsgarten, then stood
in a scherzo of blizzard
until she perished of bitterness for this world.
I was trying to hold
the feral face of the possum
like the wild boy of Avignon, moving its slow
lips that would not end.
I was Leviticus. I was Revelation. I was
the child excavated from the battlefield at
Agincourt, then hanged
a second time,
moths in the moonlight of her forearms.
One night
I will whisper it, in toto: how I discovered
a river
like a suitor, abandoned
my dead to its vigil. How obsession
wore his silk-red
kimono, his wine-dark
mouth at my table.
How I was neither
the falcon nor falconer,
the singer the singing
nor song.
13 The Paris-American
Joseph Fasano is the author of Fugue for Other Hands, due out from Cider Press in January, 2013. His poems have appeared in FIELD, The Yale Review, Tin House, The Southern Review, Boston Review, and other publications. He won the 2008 RATTLEPoetry Prize for "Mahler in New York," and he has been a finalist for the Missouri Review Editors' Prize, the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, and the Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition, as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee. He teaches at Columbia University, among other institutions. About Fugue for Other Hands, Jeanne Marie Beaumont has written, "...this book embodies 'further, deeper, wilder'...it is never timid or tamed, has no easy comfort or uplift to offer but immerses us in the disturbances of living on this mortal earth from start to finish."