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?

Non-Fiction - Word for Word

Event Type:	Creative Nonfiction Talk
Event Date and Time:	August 5, 2015 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Description:	Non-Fiction - Word for Word Terry Alford – Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth 7:00pm – 8:30pm \| Bryant Park Reading Room Produced in partnership with New-York Historical Society Rain information: In case of rain, events are held under a tent at the Reading Room. In case of severe weather, please check bryantpark.org for the indoor location.
Venue: (map)	Bryant Park Reading Room 42nd Street Between 5th and 6th Avenue New York, NY 10018

Hayan Charara is the author of three poetry collections—The Alchemist’s Diary (Hanging Loose 2001); The Sadness of Others (Carnegie Mellon 2006), nominated for the National Book Award; and Something Sinister (Carnegie Mellon 2016). A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he is the editor of Inclined to Speak (University of Arkansas, 2008), an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. He lives in Texas.

Copyright © 2015 by Hayan Charara. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 20, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms

Hayan Charara, 1972

The trees alongside the fence
bear fruit, the limbs and leaves speeches
to you and me. They promise to give the world
back to itself. The apple apologizes
for those whose hearts bear too much zest
for heaven, the pomegranate
for the change that did not come
soon enough. Every seed is a heart, every heart
a minefield, and the bees and butterflies
swarm the flowers on its grave.
The thorn bushes instruct us
to tell our sons and daughters
who carry sticks and stones
to mend their ways.
The oak tree says to eat
only fruits and vegetables;
the pine says to eat all the stirring things.
My neighbor left long ago and did not hear
any of this. In a big country
the leader warns the leader of a small country
there must be change or else.
Birds are the same way, coming and going,
wobbling thin branches.
The warblers express pain, the crows regret,
or is it the other way around?
The mantra today is the same as yesterday.
We must become different.
The plants must, the animals,
and the ants and worms, just like the carmakers,
the soap makers before them,
and the manufacturers of rubber
and the sellers of tea, tobacco, and salt.
Such an ancient habit, making ourselves new.
My neighbor looks like my mother
who left a long time ago
and did not hear any of this.
Just for a minute, give her back to me,
before she died, kneeling
in the dirt under the sun, calling me darling
in Arabic, which no one has since.

Sarah Kay & Phil Kaye "An Origin Story"

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Tuesday, 4 August 2015