Larry Levis Summer 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. Elegy With A Chimneysweep Falling Inside It
Those twenty-six letters filling the blackboard
Compose the dark, compose
The illiterate summer sky & its stars as they appear
... - 3. 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.
... - 4. 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.
... - 5. 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
... - 6. 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,
... - 7. 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.
... - 8. The Clearing Of The Land: An Epitaph
The trees went up the hill
And over it.
Then the dry grasses of the pasture were
Only a kind of blonde light
...
