BENEDICTION
BY JOSEPH FASANO
Because it is still possible to whisper yes
another hour, wander out through wintering
awhile. Wade out through the deep snow
of the pastures, the lost ones in the small skiffs
of their shadows, the moon’s coins in the shallows
of their palms. Lie down on the frozen drum-skin
of the reservoir, in the immensities of the absences
of the grasses, in the perfect ignorance of the wind.
You have had to begin over. You have had
to empty your life of astonishing things,
to give up what the lost cannot be given.
You have had to hand your vengeance to the great
gods. Come, now: it is after
every hour. You have leaned down to your losses’
hearts like yearlings, their little shoes of iron
for the voyage. You have salvaged them in darkness
and done harm. Come, now: it is after
every after. In the lost’s songs, in this ruin
that has loosed you, be there to listen to it
happen: the winnowing, the wilder wings
departing, a radiance arriving
through night air. Be there
to listen to them open: the wild wings
in the cold air far above you, the doomed moon
in the tatters of her splendor, the story
in the winter’s bitter stars.
In the wind, in the bitter hands
of winter, be there to listen to it
whisper: the one word, the world’s song
you have not sung, the one song
you can only be, not sing of;
the one song in the night air,
in the high pines; its singing,
which, in winter, as it plays
you, as you play out through the fading
of the radiance, as your changing
takes its place among that radiance,
may have grace to make you almost what you are.
