The Second Night of the Spirit

Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul, Stanley Kunitz wrote. “The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call.” These myths, these gods, these heroes are called upon and awakened in this startlingly confessional debut volume. While exploring the dynamics of illness, Bherwani extends his domain, evoking all that is mysterious and nonsensical, beyond family, beyond earth, to heaven, to hell, embracing those old myths, gods, and heroes to try to make sense of our own mortal situation.

Within the context of a sibling’s enduring love for his brother, this collection examines the intricacies of relationship that define family. Bherwani’s narrator grapples with the brother’s affliction, exploring, in the process, the predicaments of illness, loss, and handicap.

Bhisham Bherwani studied Fine Arts at New England College. He is also a graduate of New York University and Cornell University, and the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, New England College, and The Frost Place. He was born in Bombay, India; he lives in New York City. With CavanKerry Press, Bherwani released The Second Night of the Spirit in 2009.

Autumn

Essex County, New York, 2006

My friend, his toddler son, aged three, and I,
along an Adirondack backwoods trail,
watch how the leaves have turned.  Beyond a veil
of mist, autumn’s fiery cornucopia
radiates above a brook.

On a whim,
the boy lets go his father’s hand to skip
alone across the leaf-strewn, wooden bridge.
“It’s getting dark,” his father cautions him.
I think of my brother aged three, little,
nauseous with encephalitis, in pain
entering an endless night as febrile
illness permanently damages his brain.
Almost forty years have since gone by.
I’m through with nature’s inveterate cycles.

These poems honor the human mystery. They celebrate the oneness of two great truths: that we are each other, and that we are each alone. They evoke love and loss, hurt and daily courage. These rare triumphs of spirit come alive through experience. Here are the dying father, the damaged child, the distraught and enduring mother, caught in the turn of their days by the brother who writes his heart out in these beautiful poems. Passionate feeling and powerful subject fuse their energy. The poet empowers us by enlarging our understanding.
— Marie Ponsot

I feel like a privileged guest in Bherwani’s “anonymous gazebo.” It is a deeply moving place to be, a real place as well as an internal stage on which a powerful family drama is played out in originally conceived, highly personal poems that make universal connections. The slightest taste of Bherwani’s potent concentrate of distilled grief is overpowering.
— Chard deNiord

March 2009
76 pp
Trade paper – 6 X 9.25
$16
978-1-933880-11-2