Hermitage by Joseph Fasano

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 29, 2015   Hermitage   Joseph Fasano

It’s true there were times when it was too much and I slipped off in the first light or its last hour and drove up through the crooked way of the valley   and swam out to those ruins on an island. Blackbirds were the only music in the spruces, and the stars, as they faded out, offered themselves to me   like glasses of water ringing by the empty linens of the dead. When Delilah watched the dark hair of her lover tumble, she did not shatter. When Abraham   relented, he did not relent. Still, I would tell you of the humbling and the waking. I would tell you of the wild hours of surrender,   when the river stripped the cove’s stones from the margin and the blackbirds built their strict songs in the high   pines, when the great nests swayed the lattice of the branches, the moon’s brute music touching them with fire.   And you, there, stranger in the sway of it, what would you have done there, in the ruins, when they rose   from you, when the burning wings ascended, when the old ghosts shook the music from your branches and the great lie   of your one sweet life was lifted?            Copyright © 2015 by Joseph Fasano. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I imagine everyone knows how it feels when a certain illusion by which he or she has lived is suddenly lifted, and the consequent combination of ecstasy and terror.  ‘Hermitage’ was an attempt to get across a moment like that in my own life. As for those blackbirds, I can’t argue with Whitman—the thrush’s song is as gorgeous as it gets—but I’ve always been stopped in my tracks by the singing of the red-winged blackbird, that song with its hard edges and sweeping geometries, which seems to say something about the logic and the chaos of it all.” —Joseph Fasano   Joseph Fasano is the author of the book-length poem Vincent (Cider Press Review, 2015). He teaches at Columbia University and Manhattanville College in New York City. Poetry by Fasano   Vincent (Cider Press Review, 2015) "Rocket Fantastic [excerpt]" by Gabrielle Calvocoressi "Our Daily Becoming" by Adam Clay "Midnight Loon" by Arthur Sze Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.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