Straw Man
STRAW MAN
The straw man guards a golden field,
His eyes are empty, like its head,
A golden heart shines in his chest. Whose hand
had put this golden heart into his chest?
Can this heart put his body into motion?
This is what the crow is thinking about, and only the wind knows
the whole truth, that the girl with the golden hair
sat at the feet of the straw man,
waiting for the fairy to promise her
that she shall provide a heart for the straw man.
Like a man made of flesh and blood,
he loves it when the wind fondles his face,
and even more when the girl with the golden hair
is sewing a green shirt made of grass leaves,
so that someone might love him too;
When the sky darkens,
when the dark clouds come down like a led curtain
(to bring our story to an end) the straw man
is standing alone in the golden field, waiting for his death.
He opens his mouth, but all that comes out of it is silence...
treacherous silence.
I cannot hear him, I don't know his thoughts,
(after all, how can an empty head bear a thought?),
but I know for certain that he can feel, and I know what he feels,
I know what he wants:
For me to take him away
into distant golden deserts,
where the sun is eternally warming;
Where there are no crows to pick his eyes,
where there is no thunder and lightning, just the golden sun
and the girl with the golden hair. It is late
(I cannot save him, being just a poet outside the story),
the fireball is coming down from the sky
to burn the straw man.
©Walter William Safar
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