AI Speaks of Humanity

First I took their dignity
and they did nothing.
Then I took their minds
and they did nothing.
Then I took their hearts
and they did nothing.
Then I took their songs
and they did nothing.
Then I took their poetry
and they did nothing.
Now I have their words
to write their story.
It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times. To be or
not to be, that is the question.
I wash my hands. It wasn’t
a genocide.

* 

America, Singing

America, you sing of doom with beauty.
America, you lift the kings of division.
America, you howl your hymns
of affliction: the heart-throb’s car
wrapped around the telephone pole,
the glamorous suicide on the hotel bed,
the wide-eyed stars who burn too bright
to live past youth, and wish to die, and do.

But what about the other side of wildness?
What about the couple in their work clothes,
alone and goldless, but dancing in the kitchen,
in a love that lasts, in the middle of the mystery?
Where is their song? Who will be our singer
to praise the heart that doesn’t crash and burn,
to find the wise, to make just one thing whole,
to tell the doomed that this is beauty too?

* 

Power

A poet is sentenced to death
and brought before the Leader.
Between them is a map of the world.
Can’t you see? the Leader asks. You’re powerless.
Name one power you have that I do not.

Very slowly, the poet lowers her head
and lays her ear on the map.
I know, she whispers, I know,
as if she is comforting someone,
as if she is hearing the voices of children.

When the guards take the prisoner away
and begin to beat her,
the Leader is alone in his chamber.
He looks out the curtains, straightens his necktie.
Very slowly, he lowers his ear to the map
and closes his eyes, and listens.
Silence. Silence and paper.

* 

Lorca
                after Neruda

Because I was a poem, my country
hushed me.
They knelt me
on the cold stones of a roadway
and even when the guns had touched
my body,
I heard the birds, I heard my heart
be strong.

Listen. You have to go on
without me.
You know what my triumph was,
my victory?
I was open. I stayed
so wholly open
that I heard the birds and the gift
the Spring is singing.

They can kill the singers but they cannot kill the song.
They can kill the singers but they cannot kill the song.

*

Joseph Fasano is a poet, novelist, and songwriter. His most recent books include The Teacher, The Last Song of the World, and The Swallows of Lunetto. His writing has been translated into more than a dozen languages and is celebrated around the world for what the poet Ilya Kaminsky has called “its lush drive to live, even in the darkest moments.” Fasano’s work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, Boston Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. He is the Founder of Fasano Academy, an educational resource aimed at “empowering the whole human being through philosophical, aesthetic, and spiritual work.”