Thrush Poetry Journal
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Joseph Fasano

Elegy for a Student  

for VS (1994-2013)


For years I thought I saw my brother
in the body of the great-blue heron,
he who had died before he had lived

and so was half at ease in two worlds,
the dark and watery kingdom of death
and the terrible provinces of what 

happens, so when the maples 
of the game trail splayed this morning
to show the slate gray and the ochre

of what rose there—my shoulder stroked 
with thinness as it lifted―
an old ache stirred its ashes 

in my marrow, and I lay back 
in the old boat hewn of maple
in a wild place I will never again 

return to, where the heron rose in fire
through the high pines 
and its great wings swayed

the ruins of the spruces.    
And when the great wings shook
the tree-line through its music,

when I was left alone in the silence 
of that savage place, I would play a game
in a sorrow that was strange to me,

covering my tired eyes with 
sycamore, where the new moon
left its lynx prints 

on my boot tips, where the wind’s
hymns cut the good October
cold.  Tell me, travelers on the darkened 

road, where in the woken world 
can we find them, those old ghosts 
in the singing of their wisdom, those losses 

that may come back full of 
fire, rising in their wild wings 
through the flyways, surrendering 

their common songs of morning―
unwavering, unmoving 
in their cruelty, 

but perfect, but wordless in their
mercy, singing listen, listen to this
hymning:  Though the spring winds 

cannot lift us, we are lifted.  
Though the great way
cannot take us, let us go.






Liberty, NY

Because I wanted to destroy my reverence, I pulled
the bow taut, and when it loosed it bloomed

from the shoulder of the plum-eyed
buck, which fell, covering everything with dust.  

Eat, it said, 
you are robed in beginning.

And there was more.  Whole worlds
to undo, and lay waste to.  

I laid my father’s waders in the yard 
and when the ravens shaved

their black beaks on the cold 
toes, there were whole roads 

I hadn’t untraveled,
countries I hadn’t forsaken.  

I woke and found I had fire in my hands.
Out in the weeds, behind the bracken,

I piled all the testimonies
and watched them burn.

I danced around them, singing hymnals 
in the cedar air

like legions with their flagships 
set afire, in praise of the terrible victory.

I lay on the boat in the middle of the lake.
Over the pines the moon rose 

with her silver loom
and armor.

The spruces held their bluish breath 
and listened.  Listen, I whispered, 

but it was much too late.
Crossing the waters of my life,

bound to the mast of myself,
disaster was my only open shore.





Broncos

I have driven all night to scatter the ashes
among them.   
No moon.  Few stars.  No river.

What keeps us is what flees from us 
most swiftly,
and when the first of the heavy breathings
enters, it lets me stroke
the scent from out its salted 
hair—pine sap, onion grasses, censer.

It has run itself through sweetest
thorn, through
briar, its dim blaze

like a lantern in a child’s hand.

No moon.  Few stars.  No river.

The geldings smell of cinnamon
and clover.
The starlings take
this dark barn 
to its rafters, wild
to drive out
raptor, towhee, wren.  

Come, I could take you there, this hour:
where the moon
is new, where the early owl
calls her,
where I’ve stood
and let the wild sorrow
enter―

not the thin,
blind crying of a child, but slow
at first, then steady
as the wind is: the blankness 

of a stranger 

among creatures,

a blind man who has lived out 
half his hours,

who is no one
before the coming dusks
of summer,

and who stands
among the thundering
of trouble,

where the wild-
eyed world in roan and
coal and stumbling

has come with such a wild 
joy in its body 
that it takes no 
chains and will not come again.




Joseph Fasano's most recent book is Vincent (Cider Press, 2015), a poem based on the killing of Tim McLean.  He is the author of two collections of poems: Fugue for Other Hands (2013), winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award and Poets' Prize nominee; and Inheritance (2014).  His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, Boston Review, Tin House, FIELD, Passages North, and other publications.  A winner of the RATTLE Poetry Prize, he has been featured in The Academy of American Poets' poem-a-day program and Verse Daily, and his work is included in the anthology Poem-a-Day: 365 Poems for Every Occasion (Abrams, 2015).  He teaches at Columbia University and Manhattanville College.




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