Drunk on clouds and yesterday’s rain, <br />his hollow eyes would hate the stars <br />and his hat shelter him from pain <br />to the whirr of distant passing cars, <br /> <br />but the cosmos inside his head <br />is only a vacuum of air: <br />he cannot feel my angst or dread, <br />though oft I think he knows despair. <br /> <br />Fastened to the stick of a broom, <br />his cramped straw feet would touch the ground <br />and his racked arms embrace the gloom <br />of anguished nights wound round and round, <br /> <br />but he won’t tame a feral crowd, <br />nor build temples of a new faith, <br />nor in tears cry to God out loud, <br />nor enter heaven like a wraith. <br /> <br />Underneath an unminding moon <br />amid corn that spreads on and on, <br />he never lives and dies too soon <br />as endlessly, I wait for dawn.<br /><br />Leo Yankevich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-scarecrow-3/
