Larry Levis Poems

Different days,
Different hours,
Many faces,
bouqutes of flowers,
...

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.
...

My love and I are inventing a country, which we
can already see taking shape, as if wheels were
passing through yellow mud. But there is a prob-
lem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw
...

The trees went up the hill
And over it.
Then the dry grasses of the pasture were
Only a kind of blonde light
...

My youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying
Echoes of billiards in the pool hall where
I spent it all, extravagantly, believing
...

1.

Looking into the eyes of Gerard de Nerval
You notice the giant sea crabs rising.
...

Sister once of weeds & a dark water that held still
In ditches reflecting the odd,
Abstaining clouds that passed, & kept
...

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,
...

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
...

Someday, when you are twenty-four and walking through
The street of a foreign city...
Let me go with you a little way,
...