Two Poems by Joseph Fasano

For My Friends Whose Hearts Are Breaking

This is how it is: we live again.
We rise up
from the love-bed in our wreckage
and we walk again
and we open
every window,
and we live again, though living
is the cost.

Yes, my friends, I have a thing to tell you:

My story
is your story, on this wild earth:

I loved once, I was broken,
and I rose again—

and although I closed my arms
around my body,
although I said that darkened harp
was ruined,
the nights have filled my life with brutal music
that has taught me that we’re only here
to listen,
to hold each other awhile
and to listen,

and to carry each other
with the song of songs inside us
that is wiser, and is greater than our changes,
and that sings the way most wholly when we’re lost.

*

Love Poems for Our Friends

Where are the poems for those who know us?

Not for star-crossed loves,
for agonies of longing,
but words for those who go with us
the whole road.

How would they start, I wonder?
You let me crash
when I was new to ruin.
You came to me
though visiting hours were over.
You held me when my loves
were done, were flames.

Yes, we will lose a few
in the changes.
But these are the ones
who save us:
not the charmers,
not the comets of wild passion,
not the ups-and-downs of love’s unlucky hungers,

but the ones who stand
by our shoulder at the funeral
and lead us back to the city of the living
and put our favorite record on the player
and go away, and come back,
always come back,

with bread and wine
and one word, one word: stay.

*

Joseph Fasano is the author of ten books, including The Last Song of the World (BOA Editions). His work has been widely anthologized and translated into more than a dozen languages. His honors include The Cider Press Review Book Award, The Wordview Prize from the Poetry Archive, and a nomination by Linda Pastan for the Poets’ Prize, “awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living poet years prior to the award year.” He is the Founder of Fasano Academy, which offers instruction in several fields of study, including poetry, philosophy, and theology.