scarecrow
wesleyan poetry
robert fernandez
Wesleyan University Press — Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
2016 © Robert Fernandez
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill
Typeset in Electra LT Standard
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available upon request.
Cover design by Mindy Basinger Hill.
for mary and for mimi
contents
Scarecrow 1
When for a Moment 3
It Would Be Better If You Tasted Rain 5
We Adorn 7
If I Offend You with My Leniency 8
The Dauphin 9
A Vein of Earth 11
After Antonioni’s La Notte 12
Pack 15
Lost Time 16
Sing Again 17
Rogue Estates 18
Your Loves Travel and Stand 19
Bantams 20
And 22
So Strange Arrangements 23
All the Deadly Ones 24
The Dog 25
The Ground Beneath 26
The Leaning 27
Flags 28
Full Day 29
Ad Absurdum 30
Bruckner Grew Up among Weevils 31
Dayrun 32
Those You Live Among 33
In Winter with Starred Standards 34
The Blood Desires Nakedness of Every Sort 35
Crowns 36
Then from the Bronze World 37
Vincent 38
Of Listening and Patient Work 39
How Could I Have Clipped So Near 40
They Remember My Name 42
What Tree Does Give 43
We Are Elsewhere 44
Who Makes a Chorus of You Here 46
Tasso 47
Fêtes 48
You Are Not Here 50
We Challenge 52
Where You Hunt, Your Blood Goes Cold 54
Softly the Day Stands 55
I Want to Die Better 57
Which Chatters Beauty 59
Every Horned Wayfarer 61
Thanatos 63
Again 65
—
Acknowledgments 69
scarecrow
scarecrow
Bring your servants close.
Nesting is not a time.
There is no damage here.
The brain is fine. The leaves,
fine. The wine is as black as ever
—
There is a pace
and it slows
and it sees
and it
lows
—
One slickens up to you, all
oil, to assure you of your substance.
This is all all all. Make a note
of it. Herein lies a balance
for yellow birds with black heads
and black moths with yellow heads
and all detritus of coming near
the realm of the dead—namely,
yellow and black leaves softened parting
—
So I am a pairing—I know my rules:
let sheep eat sheep and lions, lions.
Let Latins meet Greeks under patch-
work quilts. Let the vision plaid
for a bit
—
I bit
and the grapefruit had a bit
of death’s black and from my tear ducts
came grapefruit seeds, black
as hor-
nets. Pity
them Lord for they know not
what they do. Pity the lions and the locusts
—
Pity the animals—the day is a raze,
heat and wheat gathered into airy combines
of thrashing. The noise spins lions
in the air. My fair one falls
down to me on black ropes. No
one can see me, and hope is a thing
for birds and fools. I drool
on locust bouquets and steps
of honey. Come
—
Meet your master
in the dust; with his
one tooth, he drains
you dry. May you spin
here, scarecrow, among
the other straw-like things
planted in the dark earth,
swollen with light and time
when for a moment
When for a moment
you eat through
the air to swallow
syrupy red letters
Poe
Poe
Poe
—
And bells could be
jasmine and gold,
bone and soap,
seaweed and ivy
—
Crack dread’s
red egg on
the burning rock
and let your eyes
speak, your hands
walk
—
The lake
unveils its planks;
you find your way
to the red silk pavilion
—
A meal of steaks and pearls
in impossible heat
with cameras at
—
Every angle
and the lions, too,
with watchful eyes—
—
Drain that bourbon
to the red, to the dre-
gs of silt and baboon,
to all animals mashed
and quiet, disastered
and interred, en-
tered in stasis, in
stillness
it would be better if you tasted rain
It would be better if you tasted rain
than this spiced asphalt,
leavened brown horizon and flapjack
blacktop
—
Pollution gets in the skin, spices it
red brown red yellow red brown,
so we
—
Take a swim beyond the dusty chambers of summer,
out where coasts decant coolness and fins rising
from heat slicks reveal cooler depths
—
If time’s a chance to stand outside romance
with the immediacies of never-ending foliage
and mark mark mark yes! our pastures for our own
and forthcoming disasters—
—
Here is a bust that rolls down a hill and breaks the water,
fat with coolness
—
I wanted to know a name; I played sports; I
wore shorts; I had a mother and a father (they did too); I
challenged every bone, went south for the winter; I
ate duck, roasted; I said “quail” (it buoyed in me); I
wanted and I wanted, and I
—
Remained. O Icy water, spilled
like a blade across the neck, I ask
that you do your work, I
am tired and it is hot
and today I
have the energy for almost nothing
we adorn
I ask for the broken ladder to fill my head
for sunstroke, red horns of wheat
for dailiness, let me know particulars
O red horn brightened in my chest,
the hairs are countless, I ask
for lozenges like islands, and the color—
red yellow blue—staining the dark
I ask for daylight, forms noticed, held, cut
down from shadow and trembling, held
for the moon’s horn filled with red honey
and for the chance of day, a gamble with red chips
The time is taken, culled, like
fruit the time has darkened, blue,
seven panes of glass crushed into the roots
the time is deadly, a coral snake
and we adorn, we adorn
if i offend you with my leniency
If I offend you with my leniency,
I am like a bird with smoked tendons
roughening the hues, fanning my eyes;
my love is a red die rolling in the void
—
And who whistles the empty
pot that burns in your kitchen?
Everything screams
pointless and damage
damage d-a-m-a-g-e, I
see a kite stuck in a tree
I see a hand thinning and
portents dissolving like fat
—
I cultivate a certain dying I find it
rare, that is my way; I comb it
with exceeding carefulness from
my nerves, delicately as a kite
—
I am the brown bittered
fig skinned with tomb
leeks in brown sauce
and a winking eye
like a suede curtain
—
and am soles of the feet
gold that clicks
its tongue against the roof
of the mouth rafraf rafraf
the dauphin
Sometimes
you have to break him
before he’ll ride,
—
Sometimes you have to
braid him
before he’ll rye
—
Sometimes a smile sits
in the center of the table
like a rare roast beef
—
And sometimes tragedy is lop-
limbed sometimes plates of spa-
ghetti spaghetti spa-
—
Ghetti and
strawberries
in black bowls;
—
Sometimes
cabbage and
black liver
—
The Dauphin sez “blood in shaved ice!”
or “blood shaved down to
a black carriage!”
—
The vultures hath; they are wroth;
the ghouls are broad shouldered and recline
comfortably across our stomachs
—
Never never never second-
guess yourself, sez he, whose teeth
shine and brown like butter
a vein of earth
What force in flies? Are you
insistent? Are you dead?
Are you guilty? Has your
name been lifted, a vein
of earth from earth?
—
Your eyes’ marvelous bandaging
in crisp clean bandaging in
bone-dry depth so that the eyes,
uncovered, may see—
—
Unwrap! Plague plague plague
is smeared through the city,
and the heavy-breasted bird retracts
claws over rock
—
Crowns claw over rock,
Oh how fitting for
broken bottled
blacks and greys
—
Yet sometimes
a dark red snakes
toward sunset,
raising a fine dust
—
And sometimes punishment is
absolute and sometimes
we are abandoned
after antonioni’s la notte
The champagne comes
and white stairways fly, jet-black
strawberries and white
stairways fly from
hospital silver. Release the trays
of gold
—
Truffles to the animals—they
claw our suits, mal-
aise ma-
laise m-
a-l-a-i-s-e
—
Into whose marble arms are we
released and what grey veins?
Each rocket is a cairn
of fibrous smoke.
Find your way home.
Find your way back
to me,
—
I know
you’ll settle here.
Here, worm touches sky.
Here, glass facades are robust,
fibrous water
—
Stop beside the tracks
for coffee-colored rust—the rust
is everywhere beneath the light.
The boys with the rockets.
They’re gone now.
They’re gone now.
They
are
gone
now
—
How pretty the pool is
with its blue garlands
on white garlands
with its frayed crowns
with its beetles and leaves
—
How pretty the pool is
with its teething garlands of blue
and its trim-torsoed, long-limbed light
—
When the statues wake,
I cut their cheeks, Ozymandias
—
When the statues wake,
the light and skin align;
briskly the flesh chatters
—
Valentina, seven-pointed star,
is that black blood pooling
in your mouth? Have the lines
around the buzzards’ eyes
turned silver? What shall
we play for? When you
—
Were sick, I
came to you; I tended you; I
loved you; I loved you
despite yourself; I helped you
remember your name
—
These mansions push
a horn in my chest. Let
me savor that debt let me
savor that debt let me savor
that debt
—
Say the strands are bright.
Under long lamps, all-flesh in bright strands.
On slick roads, strands from the lamps,
wet hair and shining laughter.
Take me to hereafters
of chains and milk, refusals.
It’s like the sadness of a dog
—
Will the syrinx split the head in two?
The lie’s trunk rears between its
two giant ears. We are reduced
and from nothing or not nothing
or from one another and without
restraint or brought to nothing
or very nearly ruin and disaster
disaster dis-aster then not
then take things as they come
pack
What better bread?
What hearts are gone
and beaks knock stone?
What avenues unfold?
—
Straight to roses ward
and marked off in strips like a criminal;
straight to abandoned
with a roll of gauze filling the mouth
—
Here golden hearts sing
their wolves’ temperament;
here streets announce
bright Prussias of hazel eyes
and index toes
—
I soften at the mouth
as they refuse return, full shore.
The patterns are our pack.
The clouds dimple; their shadows see
—
The temperament is another,
wolfish,
trailing a gold string. There
—
Are amities where we lock and
unlock and, meeting, part
lost time
Charm branches sleekly-lost-time,
Nativities, where-would-we-be.
Where would we be without
—
Eating white blossoms
in the slop of every death?
Look
—
At the surface—
a pearly glaze deflects,
yet the eye
—
Loves to wander. Present yourself
in the full radiance of captivation.
Your surface skin drains
—
To zeros. Take your time,
rest assured, we have courage
and genius—thick, cream-
—
Colored leaves. Evening is a mess
of blond radials and alliance sings of love,
of show-us-the-bare-neck, of the fig tree
—
And where we are. Where we are is ships
crossing the rich dark and slits-of-
the-eye rudders
sing again
Westron wynde sweeps hooks toward
what is held. Nothing’s held
Nothing’s meat buckles and
the moon rises. Nothing’s fried
The black lake, cormorant’s shine,
the diving board, white foam,
then nothing’s splash. Nothing
at the window in Japanese beetles …
Nothing nothing nothing
and a soft, red bow. Nothing
on the table with the light.
Nothing and joyful splendor,
black foam. Nothing’s eye
and this tall head of straw
in a dead season
rogue estates
Rest of peace. And rogue estates.
Rest of peace where wells blacken.
Rogue estates
dominos fall to table chatter.
At some streetlight, a fountain,
no names for us homes for us
here, no meals
no medicines for what we missed.
Part of the crane’s beak and light’s
leech. Step out from the light
into plumper hearts
your loves travel and stand
Still day falls
and love’s ghouls
streak the plane.
The heart swallows.
Clip
—
Desire at its root.
Let love stand. Panic
unbraids across the trees
and leaves crossing roofs
—
Your head can’t turn
from left to right; the entire
world unwraps beside you. You
are young; your loves
travel and stand. Your time
is homeless
—
When you are hushed, o weapon,
Scarecrow Page 1