A PRE-RAPHAELITE ORNITHOLOGIST Poem by Fernando Denis

I think about my golden nineteenth century.
Here each verse clamors among luxurious woods
And delicate summits of silk.
The imperious colors worn by Queen Victoria.
Under the dream of maiden faces
The thunderbolt illumines marbles and mirrors.

I think about the sea of the nineteenth century,
About that enormous canvas resembling the sea
Making language tremble.
Everything happens infinitely in the splendorous
Plumage of a bird:
I'm thinking about the bird on the tip of the brush.

And I write this because writing is no more
Than a reflection on death.
Before this light reinvented by my psyche
I must immediately create my own myth
Or else I will be lost in the myth of someone I do not know.

If the sky died with me in my open eyes
I would erase the sunset.
I could offer to the queen this bloodied dagger
After my suicide.

I think about the death of the nineteenth century.
I die, I want to go into the metamorphosis.
Up there birds trace death on the pupil of my eye.