Larry Levis Hear Poems
- 1. As It Begins With A Brush Stroke On A Snare Drum
The plaza was so still in that moment two years ago that
everything was clear,
As if it had been preserved beneath a kind of lacquered
stillness, &, for a while,
... - 2. Anastasia & Sandman
The brow of a horse in that moment when
The horse is drinking water so deeply from a trough
It seems to inhale the water, is holy.
... - 3. For Zbigniew Herbert, Summer, 1971, Los Angeles
No matter how hard I listen, the wind speaks
One syllable, which has no comfort in it--
Only a rasping of air through the dead elm.
... - 4. 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
... - 5. The Poet At Seventeen
My youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying
Echoes of billiards in the pool hall where
I spent it all, extravagantly, believing
My delicate touch on a cue would last for years.
... - 6. Signs
All night I dreamed of my home,
of the roads that are so long
and straight they die in the middleâ??
among the spines of elderly weeds
... - 7. The Widening Spell Of The Leaves
--The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
--for my brother
Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
... - 8. 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
...
