Testimony by Joseph Fasano

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend October 13, 2014   Testimony   Joseph Fasano

If tonight the moon should arrive like a lost guide crossing the fields with a bitter lantern in her hand, her irides blind, her dresses wild, lie down and listen to her find you; lie down and listen to the body become the promise of no other, the sleeper in the garden in its own arms, the exile in its own autumnal house. You have woken. But no one has woken. You are changed, but the light of change is bitter, the changing is the threshold into winter. Traveler, rememberer, sleeper, tonight, as you slumber where the dead are, if the moon’s hands should discover you through fire, lie down and listen to her hold you, the moon who has been away so long now, the lost moon with her silver lips and whisper, her body half in winter, half in wool. Look at her, look at her, that drifter.  And if no one, if nothing comes to know you, if no song comes to prove it isn’t over, tell yourself, in the moon’s arms, she is no one; tell yourself, as you lose love, it is after, that you alone are the bearer in that changed place, you alone who have woken, and have opened, you alone who can so love what you are now and the vanishing that carries it away.            Copyright © 2014 by Joseph Fasano. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Though I’ve lived in various cities for years now, I’m originally from a small town in the Hudson River Valley. I wrote ‘Testimony’ after driving north from New York City and walking out into some fields where I’d spent nights as a child. I remember thinking, among other things, of Larry Levis’s praise of the ‘winter stars,’ of Galway Kinnell’s reunion with the ‘wild darkness,’ and of Mark Strand’s wish to ‘lie down under the small fire / of winter stars.’ So I did. And the stillness that I heard there became this poem. Of course we’ve all tried to return somewhere and found it impossible, but sometimes that very impossibility can become its own song.” —Joseph Fasano   Joseph Fasano is the author of Inheritance (Cider Press Review, 2014). He lives in New York City. Most Recent Book by Fasano   Inheritance (Cider Press Review, 2014) "Q" by Hannah Sanghee Park "Quiet" by Tony Hoagland "Ithaca" by Ira Sadoff Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038