Joseph Fasano
Metamorphoses
Step into the orchard. Yes, you. Fresh
from the city, from
the hinterlands, from love. Come
into this place where the only music is
ripeness, wolf-song, ravens.
But come unfalteringly.
You say
there is no history here? History
is the only body trying to become
a story that will outlast it.
Yes, it says, yes,
listen. And the trees
say it, here: in red, in gold, in gala.
Think of Maxentius
drowning in his armor. Of Catherine
on her wheel before the illuminated faces.
Think of Hector dragged around the city
in his feathered greaves,
all his goddesses weeping. Our one
task is to be ready, ready
for immensity, and our immensity is that we are
never. Come, then, stranger. Put off
those robes
of sackcloth, of madness, of ashes.
There is a time of ripeness
and a time when the ripening
instructs us. Our heart—what
does it matter—our heart is the six-legged
fawn-child, with its burden it cannot quite
fathom. Kneel
with it. Yes, you,
in the grasses. Kneel here. Be
vast again. Be turned.
As morning
does, as humbling
runs, let trouble
come, walking you
from one country to another.
As Actaeon, transfigured
by the huntress, felt first
a rush, then
nothing,
then the antlers blooming bone-
cold, humbling, clicking against the wilderness
as he fled it
with the terrible immensity
of his one brief life
that yesterday he never could have heard.
The Great Questions Were Never Ours
But whole lives have been wasted on them. Whether
ten-thousand angels can dance on the head
of a pin, or twenty. Whether the body
writhing on the torturer’s table, its twisted hymns
trembling the throne-room, is the crack in the Empire’s
magnificence, or its eyes have seen God.
And no less because they shake no
nations: A man stands on the Ponte Vecchio,
casting his hat on the waters. He watches
the black silk hatband curl out onto the current,
glistening. Should he return to her? Can anything
return? The bridegroom in the closet. The daughter
by the deathbed. Whether to mourn, whether
to shine. Whether the house in the twisting arms of the fire
is burning, simply burning, or the world is the song
forgiveness would sing, had it the words. Words,
words, words, the sweet Prince
sang, when he was asked what was the matter. Whether
to say them, neighbors, or be them. To sing
or be the song. Come, my brothers
and sisters. It is late. An Empire is dying. Look out
into the summer plums, the sea again.
We stand for years at the edge
of a field, waiting for our lives to return to us
like a woman in a blue, silk dress, staring into the trees.
Look at her: she has been dancing. She has flowers
in her hair, a dance card in her waistband.
The difference between the long lament of exile
and the astonishing art of losing
is whether she will feel the tender, hesitant hand on her shoulder
as diminishment or a thing she has no name for
when it comes again to gather her into the dance.
On Banishment
When an ancient people decreed
not all could stay, they sent out
a young gazelle robed in royal
purple, pursuing it through the desert sands
until it turned, in its exhaustion,
toward them, pushing back into the crowd
for the grain held out in each traveler’s palms.
Whoever was chosen was cast out of the histories forever.
Slowly, and with stumbling
withers, with all its armor
slipping,
the new life comes.
Joseph Fasano is the author of three books of poetry: Vincent (Cider Press, 2015); Inheritance (2014), a James Laughlin Award nominee; and Fugue for Other Hands (2013), which won the Cider Press Review Book Award and was nominated for the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse by a living American poet." A winner of the RATTLE Poetry Prize, he has published poems and essays in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Times Literary Supplement, American Poet Magazine, FIELD, Tin House, The Missouri Review, Boston Review, and other journals. His work appears in the anthologies Poem-a-Day: 365 Poems for Any Occasion (Abrams, 2015) and The Aeolian Harp (Glass Lyre Press, 2016). He teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.
Return to July 2015 Edition
Step into the orchard. Yes, you. Fresh
from the city, from
the hinterlands, from love. Come
into this place where the only music is
ripeness, wolf-song, ravens.
But come unfalteringly.
You say
there is no history here? History
is the only body trying to become
a story that will outlast it.
Yes, it says, yes,
listen. And the trees
say it, here: in red, in gold, in gala.
Think of Maxentius
drowning in his armor. Of Catherine
on her wheel before the illuminated faces.
Think of Hector dragged around the city
in his feathered greaves,
all his goddesses weeping. Our one
task is to be ready, ready
for immensity, and our immensity is that we are
never. Come, then, stranger. Put off
those robes
of sackcloth, of madness, of ashes.
There is a time of ripeness
and a time when the ripening
instructs us. Our heart—what
does it matter—our heart is the six-legged
fawn-child, with its burden it cannot quite
fathom. Kneel
with it. Yes, you,
in the grasses. Kneel here. Be
vast again. Be turned.
As morning
does, as humbling
runs, let trouble
come, walking you
from one country to another.
As Actaeon, transfigured
by the huntress, felt first
a rush, then
nothing,
then the antlers blooming bone-
cold, humbling, clicking against the wilderness
as he fled it
with the terrible immensity
of his one brief life
that yesterday he never could have heard.
The Great Questions Were Never Ours
But whole lives have been wasted on them. Whether
ten-thousand angels can dance on the head
of a pin, or twenty. Whether the body
writhing on the torturer’s table, its twisted hymns
trembling the throne-room, is the crack in the Empire’s
magnificence, or its eyes have seen God.
And no less because they shake no
nations: A man stands on the Ponte Vecchio,
casting his hat on the waters. He watches
the black silk hatband curl out onto the current,
glistening. Should he return to her? Can anything
return? The bridegroom in the closet. The daughter
by the deathbed. Whether to mourn, whether
to shine. Whether the house in the twisting arms of the fire
is burning, simply burning, or the world is the song
forgiveness would sing, had it the words. Words,
words, words, the sweet Prince
sang, when he was asked what was the matter. Whether
to say them, neighbors, or be them. To sing
or be the song. Come, my brothers
and sisters. It is late. An Empire is dying. Look out
into the summer plums, the sea again.
We stand for years at the edge
of a field, waiting for our lives to return to us
like a woman in a blue, silk dress, staring into the trees.
Look at her: she has been dancing. She has flowers
in her hair, a dance card in her waistband.
The difference between the long lament of exile
and the astonishing art of losing
is whether she will feel the tender, hesitant hand on her shoulder
as diminishment or a thing she has no name for
when it comes again to gather her into the dance.
On Banishment
When an ancient people decreed
not all could stay, they sent out
a young gazelle robed in royal
purple, pursuing it through the desert sands
until it turned, in its exhaustion,
toward them, pushing back into the crowd
for the grain held out in each traveler’s palms.
Whoever was chosen was cast out of the histories forever.
Slowly, and with stumbling
withers, with all its armor
slipping,
the new life comes.
Joseph Fasano is the author of three books of poetry: Vincent (Cider Press, 2015); Inheritance (2014), a James Laughlin Award nominee; and Fugue for Other Hands (2013), which won the Cider Press Review Book Award and was nominated for the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse by a living American poet." A winner of the RATTLE Poetry Prize, he has published poems and essays in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Times Literary Supplement, American Poet Magazine, FIELD, Tin House, The Missouri Review, Boston Review, and other journals. His work appears in the anthologies Poem-a-Day: 365 Poems for Any Occasion (Abrams, 2015) and The Aeolian Harp (Glass Lyre Press, 2016). He teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.
Return to July 2015 Edition