Poems by Larry Levis

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The Oldest Living Thing In LA

At Wilshire & Santa Monica I saw an opossum

Trying to cross the street. It was late, the street

Was brightly lit, the opossum would take

A few steps forward, then back away from the breath

Of moving traffic. People coming out of the bars

Would approach, as if to help it somehow.

It would lift its black lips & show them

The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors,

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Larry Levis

The Poem You Asked For

My poem would eat nothing.

I tried giving it water

but it said no,

worrying me.

Day after day,

I held it up to the llight,

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Larry Levis

Blue Stone

Someday, when you are twenty-four and walking through

The street of a foreign city...

Let me go with you a little way,

Let me be that stranger you won't notice.

And when you turn and enter a bar full of young men

and women, and your laughter rises,

Like the stones of a path up a mountain,

To say that no one has died,

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Larry Levis

Caravaggio: Swirl & Vortex

In the Borghese, Caravaggio, painter of boy whores, street punk, exile & murderer,

Left behind his own face in the decapitated, swollen, leaden-eyed head of Goliath,

And left the eyelids slightly open, & left on the face of David a look of pity

Mingling with disgust. A peach face; a death mask. If you look closely you can see

It is the same face, & the boy, murdering the man, is murdering his own boyhood,

His robe open & exposing a bare left shoulder. In 1603, it meant he was available,

For sale on the street where Ranuccio Tomassoni is falling, & Caravaggio,

Puzzled that a man would die so easily, turns & runs.

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Larry Levis

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

—The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968

—for my brother

Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.

I was driving south toward a large city famous

For so little it had a replica, in concrete,

In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck

In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.

But the city was hours away, beyond the hills

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Larry Levis

Elegy For Whatever Had A Pattern In It

Now that the Summer of Love has become the moss of tunnels

And the shadowy mouths of tunnels & all the tunnels lead into the city,

I'm going to put the one largely forgotten, swaying figure of Ediesto Huerta

Right in front of you so you can watch him swamp fruit

Out of an orchard in the heat of an August afternoon, I'm going to let you

Keep your eyes on him as he lifts & swings fifty-pound boxes of late

Elberta peaches up to me where I'm standing on a flatbed trailer & breathing in

Tractor exhaust so thick it bends the air, bends things seen through it

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Larry Levis

In 1969

Some called it the Summer of Love, & although the clustered,

Motionless leaves that overhung the streets looked the same

As ever, the same as they did every summer, in 1967,

Anybody with three dollars could have a vision.

And who wouldn’t want to know what it felt like to be

A cedar waxwing landing with a flutter of gray wings

In a spruce tree, & then disappearing into it,

For only three dollars? And now I know; its flight is ecstasy.

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Larry Levis

The Future Of Hands

All winter

The trees held up their silent hives

As if they mattered.

But on one main street of bars and lights,

I watched a woman who had begged for days

Throw all the coins back, insulted,

Into the crowd,

And then each cheap stone on her necklace,

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Larry Levis

Elegy With A Bridle In Its Hand

One was a bay cowhorse from Piedra & the other was a washed out palomino

And both stood at the rail of the corral & both went on aging

In each effortless tail swish, the flies rising, then congregating again

Around their eyes & muzzles & withers.

Their front teeth were by now as yellow as antique piano keys & slanted to the angle

Of shingles on the maze of sheds & barn around them; their puckered

Chins were round & black as frostbitten oranges hanging unpicked from the limbs

Of trees all through winter like a comment of winter itself on everything

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Larry Levis

Readings In French

Looking into the eyes of Gerard de Nerval

You notice the giant sea crabs rising.

Which is what happens

When you look into the eyes of Gerard de Nerval,

Always the same thing: the giant sea crabs,

The claws in their vague red holsters

Moving around, a little doubtfully.

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Larry Levis

Those Graves In Rome

There are places where the eye can starve,

But not here. Here, for example, is

The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room

Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing

Tourists. And here is the Protestant Cemetery

Where Keats & Joseph Severn join hands

Forever under a little shawl of grass

And where Keats's name isn't even on

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Larry Levis

Prose Poem

Toad, hog, assassin, mirror. Some of its favorite words, which are breath. Or handwriting: the long tail of the ‘y’ disappearing into a barn like a rodent’s, and suddenly it is winter after all.

After all what? After the ponds dry up in mid-August and the children drop pins down each canyon and listen for an echo. Next question, please. What sex is it, if it has any? It’s a male. It’s a white male Caucasian. No distinguishing birthmarks, the usual mole above the chin. Last seen crossing against a light in Omaha. Looks intelligent. But haven’t most Americans seen this poem at least once by now? At least once. Then, how is the disease being . . . communicated? As far as we can determine, it is communicated entirely by doubt. As soon as the poets reach their mid-twenties they begin living behind hedgerows. At the other end of the hedgerows someone attractive is laughing, either at them, or with a lover during sexual intercourse. So it is like prom night. Yes. But what is the end of prom night? The end of prom night is inside the rodent; it is the barn collapsing on a summer day. It is inside the guts of a rodent. Then, at least, you are permitted an unobstructed view of the plain? Yes. And what will be out there, then, on the plain? A rider approaching with a tense face, who can’t see that this horse has white roses instead of eyes. You mean . . . the whole thing all over again. Unfortunately, yes, at least as far as we are permitted to see

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Larry Levis