Scarecrow Read online

  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,