Scarecrow

by Robert Fernandez

crows which enter the blood

  and draw their beaks

  through bloody strands, we

  —

  Did not serpent,

  did not suspect

  we were being

  nudged clean

  vincent

  Vincent,

  it’s where the beading

  stops and

  —

  Vincent,

  it’s where the beading

  stops

  —

  Vincent,

  it’s where the beading stops

  and the blood drains into a bowl

  —

  Vincent,

  only our loves

  come to drink

  —

  Vincent,

  the yellows and reds

  are crystal

  —

  Vincent,

  the yellows and blues

  drift through the horn of the head

  —

  Vincent,

  the sun’s sagging eye

  drops toys on us

  of listening and patient work

  I hold

  the work

  I

  was nursed I

  was shuttled

  I lost my name

  I could not see

  I could not see debt

  I could not see love

  I could not see sickness

  or health or ruin

  I could not see

  O draft of lilies

  I am delivered

  I and grace

  I

  am ashamed

  I am humbled

  I ruin and I

  reprieve

  I witness love

  how could i have clipped so near

  Rhododendrons craft

  a coat of many colors

  for sun the color

  of rhododendrons

  —

  The pile of rhododendrons

  we eat when the stomach

  is rhododendron glass, hunger

  —

  Is curved

  like a barnacle,

  grips

  —

  The past and its silk

  of ruins, no

  rhododendron silk,

  —

  No pier

  on which

  love stands

  overlooking

  —

  A rhododendron-glass sea—how

  could I have clipped so near

  to ruin

  —

  How could love have stood

  so fast, I

  know debt

  but that is not need, no

  rhododendron-colored bills

  —

  To elaborate our foreignness,

  to elaborate forgiveness

  they remember my name

  Under the rain that pulls the gods by their baby-black

  hair.—They remember my name, I

  remember my name. How

  —

  Did a name stoop so forcefully

  under coal-black shores, crayon-black

  shores—we chart through mud,

  —

  We plod, we

  cut through earth,

  we are born

  —

  Through earth,

  and bitter crops stoop

  to bear the burden lightly, love

  —

  A black crayon scrawls the light

  what tree does give

  What tree does give

  of its burden in plates even

  sliding all of a sun all all all of a sun

  all of a sudden from the truck bed

  to the asphalt in sheets of glassy so-

  und sound sound?

  —

  Everything crashes, every-

  thing’s a mane beneath which flesh

  flexes, and what’s your burden have

  you lost your hair what’s your sour

  what makes your stomach a withery

  pit? Tell me

  —

  Truly and I’ll release you—I want no

  simple days; rather, I want forms cut

  like hours to each precise transient hue.

  Never ever land eat sand burn in the skillet

  —

  Grease and lard grease and lard

  the day is hard

  —

  Is a black lava bed covered with flamingos

  that rise in unison

  we are elsewhere

  Let them

  be torn

  by

  —

  Dogs, by buds,

  by odes

  to joy

  —

  This is no surety

  but to glide the rift,

  we feel grateful

  —

  For sanity

  for the press

  of talk

  for care

  —

  It comes

  like a miracle, we

  —

  Feel grateful

  For reprieve

  reprieve

  reprieve

  —

  The day

  is wrapped

  in silver paper

  —

  We

  are elsewhere

  in shadow

  in the bleeding

  sinuses of ruins, the day’s

  reprieve

  is finely spotted

  —

  She lyre she can attest

  she lyre but lets

  the wheel

  claw out

  —

  We stand

  as tall as wheat,

  as wheel’s thin strands

  of lights, we break

  from spoked centers

  who makes a chorus of you here

  Really I am leaving you the point

  point which is hard meat, bone, stone

  and the flint that brings the forehead bone

  to flame, we

  —

  Work hard, we are tools, we

  are relevant singulars scraping stone, shuttling

  ash, say

  —

  You’d rather have a song from us, scraping ash, I

  prefer the dashboard wet with evening and our

  bodies turning, bodies turned—like the poem,

  master, windowpane window pane window p-

  a-n-e

  —

  Quietly to our succor, window, quietly to our succor

  “danger lurks around every corner”

  daylight lurks around every corner, a man

  in block-velour suit, a ziggurat, head stretched

  to the tops of the buildings

  —

  Who makes a chorus of you here,

  let’s bring him colorful fruits and flowers,

  every stanching of colorful flowers to fill the wells

  and wounds, garlands of fruit-colored silvery flowers

  for necks and heads and thighs and arms and wrists, help

  us purveyors of mystery bring beauty to the brown dust form

  of day, let us

  —

  Feast a while, for we have the time

  tasso

  In the madhouse of St. Anna,

  we cover the knees with blood beads

  where the depth of our pleading for Silvias

  is like black leaves drawn up

  in endless buckets from a well

  —

  Children bring their buckets to the shore,

  green and yellow, green and yellow as in

  the madhouse of St. Anna we boil sand

  dollars and watch ladders and jets stretch

  into the thrashings of tree tops

  —

  Nothing you could have done would have borne

  you right. For twenty years, misery and sickness

  slipped their mask between your shoulder blades

  and burdened
you with contours and with eyes

  fixed rigidly toward the earth

  —

  Bring your carriage to Sant’Onofrio where dark

  jets will issue from you, will stiffen to blinding pillars

  and the dogs will sport beneath you and the winds

  tangle beneath you and the fountains

  laugh beneath you

  fêtes

  Green barges

  fill the night

  and green clouds

  —

  Fill the night

  and the lime trees

  fatten with night

  —

  On the barges,

  the night’s drawn up

  into chandeliers—

  —

  The mosquitos, cool

  and smooth and cut

  from coal, illuminate

  —

  Feasting.

  The skin is naked

  as a die;

  —

  The drone

  of mosquitos rolls

  from our talk;

  —

  Green dresses

  issue a pink mist

  and mouths roll over

  —

  Bars of coal, a smooth

  speech of the dead.

  The barges and their

  —

  Chandeliers lift

  into the leaves

  of lime trees,

  —

  Into strands

  of starlight

  you are not here

  You are not here.

  The eyes dilate

  and coasts harden to green-

  blue waters and

  boardwalks

  boardwalks

  boardwalks

  —

  I make a mansion

  of this house. Some simple

  dying happens in the rooms.

  A horn flowers on the couch

  —

  Left for a time

  where the earth bears us up—

  O hardened season

  where the earth bears us up.

  O cities of forms and cares,

  the distances bear us up

  —

  When in some season

  we worked and struggled back,

  diamonds and cravats

  and sharper angles split the blood

  —

  Here was the time to be

  ravenous. A farther horizon

  ate the blood in great drips

  —

  The blood comes with love

  in spoonfuls. It is impossible

  to speak

  we challenge

  We challenge

  the skins of the air

  to lay their coffins

  of summer light—

  —

  None of us here

  with braided

  A-frames of summer light

  and coal at our tongues

  can stretch to speak

  —

  The plain foreground

  is summer. Summer

  is dead and thunder.

  Summer is a cleft and

  distant. They

  —

  Sheared my shoulders.

  They trimmed

  my heart. I no longer

  know I

  —

  No longer know

  I

  —

  No longer know

  —

  I remember she

  is there and we

  stand the light

  —

  The elevator, hanging

  a single bare

  bulb

  —

  The time wilts.

  The folds rot.

  The folds fall

  and bleed for

  all accounts, en-

  counters

  where you hunt, your blood goes cold

  Your loves take on

  a harrowing significance,

  bright stars of blood

  born in bathtubs of ice

  —

  Let there be bowls

  of rice tonight and steam

  for naked shoulders; huddle

  up among friends, close the door

  —

  The distance

  rattles its horns

  and the wheat stands shrill

  —

  We have the song

  from the lady we have

  only so much only so much

  we have only so much

  softly the day stands

  Jackson

  Pollock

  called me

  on the sea-

  shell foam

  and told me

  Blue Poles

  sold for two

  million

  —

  Where the two million

  blue sand dollars

  pad the sky,

  the clouds crease,

  waves flex,

  and stars

  darken

  —

  May the dead

  harden into

  cold candy

  —

  Softly

  the sea sees

  me

  Softly

  the day stands

  and strays

  —

  Mary the dread

  hardens into

  cold candles—

  Seawater folding

  in the cuffs,

  gold folding

  at the drain

  —

  A serpent

  coldly at the drain

  and a grainy disc

  of sun

  —

  A weight

  of blue sky

  and a black slit

  of melon

  i want to die better

  My god, I want

  to die better

  than I can

  and want to carry

  names

  —

  I was taught to believe

  that I could eat the ground

  and was a singer

  and the seeds they pour

  like humanness

  and the song

  it forgets

  —

  They are not songs

  they are going

  to kill me I have

  a pigeon’s feather

  in my tongue I

  have a print of pigeon’s

  foot in my brain

  —

  I was lost

  but the summer rolled

  me in its wave

  I

  —

  Love her

  —

  The song goes

  cold, braided

  Baudelaire bubbles

  off the beach in

  —

  Montauk,

  his bobbing head, we

  blow smoke in his direction

  —allay allay allay—

  which chatters beauty

  Let them be known

  to be found,

  glacial ear

  of corn breaking

  from a white sleeve

  —

  The brain is tough

  and leaves today

  on a ship that’s off

  to sink; ex-

  cellence!

  —

  And to sink is off—

  pink billiards,

  crocodile mouths,

  and cakes

  —

  Stand

  where the water’s

  black as tar,

  where the stars

  twist to cadences,

  where rhythm sets us

  in a straw

  vest

  —

  The night

  is cherry syrup

  and suffocating orcas,

  a cosmos of limbs, bright

  and brittle, bright

  hysterias of eyes, let

  —

>   Your altitudes collapse

  and shores restore

  to the face, which

  chatters beauty

  every horned wayfarer

  Every horned wayfarer,

  every ankh, every

  shoulder blade

  stretching out

  beyond

  —

  Itself, horizon.

  And again the day

  is thinning

  —

  Blond

  and knows

  —

  Itself,

  droplets; and

  knows itself,

  the mirrors spread

  unevenly; and

  knows the silk

  is spread

  —

  To the mouth’s

  rotted

  corners. He set

  a chair

  to take in

  sea sea sea,

  a mighty peeling mottle

  of clouds’

  distant roughening,

  silence and

  —

  Stony

  surface. Let us

  look. The room

  is full of light. The

  answer:

  let it take us

  thanatos

  I had known and understood

  the time was near.

  The blackboard

  cracked. Thunder

  fell

  —

  In red,

  and naked faces

  roamed the walk.

  The sun came through.

  Rimbaud’s leg again;

  he begged. But worms

  turned up through the grass,

  and purple

  —

  Flowers. Not

  again. Tra-

  gedy, and wells.

  Wells, wells, wells. Fresh

  water, cold, and that wet

  wood. Under

  —

  The umbrella trees

  with black wine black

  plums black folds, body’s

  sweater, loose skin, snake

  skin, skim the top, black-

  er, of our center, ever

  colder, suck

  —

  Suck suck

  we draw

  it up, draw

  the cold, the cold

  is ours, we stay the cold,

  the cold is

  —

  Ours, the clod

  is ours, the bloc is ours, the

  black is ours, the cake is ours,

  the star is ours, the lake

  is ours, the streak is ours,

  the streak of cold, the lock,

  the streak of cold, held

  cold, held stark, in-

  ward

  again

  Thirty-four, and

  death has me eating

  out of

  —

  A vanilla-paper

  envelope

  —

  All the

  horrors

  of the Mirror, all

  of the Have-Not

  and Will-Agains

  —

  But time she spins

  with me and each

  she stands with me

  each there each

  each and shall we

  —

  Really

  be gone

  —

  But for today