Cover Page

Also by Larry Levis

Wrecking Crew, 1972
The Afterlife, 1977
The Dollmaker's Ghost, 1981
Winter Stars, 1985
The Widening Spell of the Leaves, 1991

The publication of this book is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D. C., a Federal agency, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Dedication

For my mother and in memory of my father

Winter Stars

THE POET AT SEVENTEEN

My youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying

Echoes of billiards in the pool halls where

I spent it all, extravagantly, believing

My delicate touch on a cue would last for years.

Outside the vineyards vanished under rain,

And the trees held still or seemed to hold their breath

When the men I worked with, pruning orchards, sang

Their lost songs: Amapola; La Paloma;

Jalisco, No Te Rajes—the corny tunes

Their sons would just as soon forget, at recess,

Where they lounged apart in small groups of their own.

Still, even when they laughed, they laughed in Spanish.

I hated high school then, & on weekends drove

A tractor through the widowed fields. It was so boring

I memorized poems above the engine's monotone.

Sometimes whole days slipped past without my noticing,

And birds of all kinds flew in front of me then.

I learned to tell them apart by their empty squabblings,

The slightest change in plumage, or the inflection

Of a call. And why not admit it? I was happy

Then. I believed in no one. I had the kind

Of solitude the world usually allows

Only to kings & criminals who are extinct,

Who disdain this world, & who rot, corrupt & shallow

As fields I disced: I turned up the same gray

Earth for years. Still, the land made a glum raisin

Each autumn, & made that little hell of days-—

The vines must have seemed like cages to the Mexicans

Who were paid seven cents a tray for the grapes

They picked. Inside the vines it was hot, & spiders

Strummed their emptiness. Black Widow, Daddy Longlegs.

The vine canes whipped our faces. None of us cared.

And the girls I tried to talk to after class

Sailed by, then each night lay enthroned in my bed,

With nothing on but the jewels of their embarrassment.

Eyes, lips, dreams. No one. The sky & the road.

A life like that? It seemed to go on forever—

Reading poems in school, then driving a stuttering tractor

Warm afternoons, then billiards on blue October

Nights. The thick stars. But mostly now I remember

The trees, wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness

Like party dresses. And parties I didn't attend.

And then the first ice hung like spider lattices

Or the embroideries of Great Aunt No One,

And then the first dark entering the trees—

And inside, the adults with their cocktails before dinner,

The way they always seemed afraid of something,

And sat so rigidly, although the land was theirs.

ADOLESCENCE

—for Sharon and Earl

Our babysitter lives across from the Dodge Street cemetery,

And behind her broad, untroubled face.

Her sons play touch football all afternoon

Among the graves of clerks & Norwegian settlers.

At night, these huge trees, rooted in such quiet,

Arch over the tombstones as if in exultation,

As if they inhaled starlight.

Their limbs reach

Toward each other & their roots must touch the dead.

When I was fifteen,

There was a girl who loved me; whom I did not love, & she

Died, that year, of spinal meningitis. By then she

Had already left home, & was working in a carnival—

One of those booths where you are supposed

To toss a dime onto a small dish. Finally,

In Laredo, Texas, someone anonymous, & too late, bought her

A bus ticket back….

Her father, a gambler & horse dealer, wept

Openly the day she was buried. I remember looking off

In embarrassment at the woods behind his house.

The woods were gray, vagrant, the color of smoke

Or sky. I remember thinking then that

If I had loved her, or even slept with her once,

She might still be alive.

And if, instead, we had gone away together

On two bay horses that farted when they began to gallop,

And if, later, we had let them

Graze at their leisure on the small tufts of spring grass

In those woods, & if the disintegrating print of the ferns

Had been a lullaby there against the dry stones & the trunks

Of fallen trees, then maybe nothing would have happened….

There are times, hiking with my wife past

Abandoned orchards of freckled apples & patches of sunlight

In New Hampshire, or holding her closely against me at night

Until she sleeps, when nothing else matters, when

The trees shine without meaning more than they are, in moonlight,

And when it seems possible to disappear wholly into someone

Else, as into a wish on a birthday, the candles trembling…

Maybe nothing would have happened, but I heard that

Her father died, a year later, in a Sierra lumber camp.

He had been drinking steadily all week,

And was dealing cards

When the muscle of his own heart

Kicked him back into his chair so hard its wood snapped.

He must have thought there was something

Suddenly very young inside his body,

If he had time to think….

And if death is an adolescent, closing his eyes to the music

On the radio of that passing car,

I think he does not know his own strength.

If I stand here long enough in this stillness I can feel

His silence involve, somehow, the silence of these trees,

The sky, the little squawking toy my son lost

When it slipped into the river today….

Today, I am thirty-four years old. I know

That horse dealer with a limp loved his plain, & crazy daughter.

I know, also, that it did no good.

Soon, the snows will come again & cover that place

Where he sat at a wobbling card table underneath

A Ponderosa pine, & cover

Even the three cards he dropped there, three silent diamonds,

And cover everything in the Sierras, & make my meaning plain.

THE CRY

Then, everything slept.

The sky & the fields slept all the way to the Pacific,

And the houses slept.

The orchards blackened in their sleep,

And, outside my window, the aging Palomino slept

Standing up in the moonlight, with one rear hoof slightly cocked,

And the moonlight slept.

The white dust slept between the rows of vines,

And the quail slept perfectly, like untouched triangles.

The hawk slept alone, apart from this world.

In the distance I could see the faint glow

Of Parlier—even its name a lullaby,

Where the little bars slept with only one light on,

And the prostitutes slept, as always,

With the small-time businessmen, their hair smelling of pomade,

Who did not dream.

Dice slept in the hands of the town's one gambler, & outside

His window, the brown grass slept,

And beyond that, in a low stand of trees, ashes slept

Where men with no money had built a fire, and had lain down,

Beside the river,

And saw in their sleep how the cold shape of fire

Made, from each crystal of ash, the gray morning,

Which consoled no one.

Beside me, my brother slept

With a small frown knitted into his face, as if

He listened for something, his mouth open.

But there was nothing.

On my last night as a child, that sleep was final.

Above me, the shingles slept on the roof,

And the brick chimney, with smoke rising through it, slept,

And the notes on sheet music slept.

I went downstairs, then, to the room

Where my mother & father slept with nothing on, & the pale light

Shone through the window on the candor

Of their bodies strewn over the sheets, & those bodies

Were not beautiful, like distant cities.

They were real bodies

With bruises & lattices of fatigue over their white stomachs,

And over their faces.

His hair was black, & thinning. Hers was the color of ashes.

I could see every detail that disappointment had sketched,

Idly, into them: her breasts & the widening thigh

That mocked my mother with the intricate,

Sorrowing spasm of birth;

I could see

The stooped shoulders & sunken chest of my father,

Sullen as the shape of a hawk in wet weather,

The same shape it takes in its death,

When you hold it in your outstretched hand,

And wonder how it can shrink to so small a thing,

And then you are almost afraid, judging by the truculence

Of its beak & the vast, intricate plan

Of its color & delicate shading, black & red & white,

That it is only sleeping,

Only pretending a death.

But both of them really unlike anything else

Unless you thought, as I did,

Of the shape of beaten snow, & absence, & a sleep

Without laughter.

They lay there on their bed.

I saw every detail, & as I turned away

Those bodies moved slightly in the languor of sleep,

And my mother cried out once, but did not awaken,

And that cry stayed on in the air—

And even as I turned away, their frail bodies,

Seen as if for a last time,

Reminded me of ravines on either side of the road,

When I ran,

And did not know why.

WINTER STARS

My father once broke a man's hand

Over the exhaust pipe of a John Deere tractor. The man,

Rubén Vásquez, wanted to kill his own father

With a sharpened fruit knife, & he held

The curved tip of it, lightly, between his first

Two fingers, so it could slash

Horizontally, & with surprising grace,

Across a throat. It was like a glinting beak in a hand,

And, for a moment, the light held still

On those vines. When it was over,

My father simply went in & ate lunch, & then, as always,

Lay alone in the dark, listening to music.

He never mentioned it.

I never understood how anyone could risk his life,

Then listen to Vivaldi.

Sometimes, I go out into this yard at night,

And stare through the wet branches of an oak

In winter, & realize I am looking at the stars

Again. A thin haze of them, shining

And persisting.

It used to make me feel lighter, looking up at them.

In California, that light was closer.

In a California no one will ever see again,

My father is beginning to die. Something

Inside him is slowly taking back

Every word it ever gave him.

Now, if we try to talk, I watch my father

Search for a lost syllable as if it might

Solve everything, & though he can't remember, now,

The word for it, he is ashamed….

If you can think of the mind as a place continually

Visited, a whole city placed behind

The eyes, & shining, I can imagine, now, its end—

As when the lights go off, one by one,

In a hotel at night, until at last

All of the travelers will be asleep, or until

Even the thin glow from the lobby is a kind

Of sleep; & while the woman behind the desk

Is applying more lacquer to her nails,

You can almost believe that the elevator,

As it ascends, must open upon starlight.

I stand out on the street, & do not go in.

That was our agreement, at my birth.

And for years I believed

That what went unsaid between us became empty,

And pure, like starlight, & that it persisted.

I got it all wrong.

I wound up believing in words the way a scientist

Believes in carbon, after death.

Tonight, I'm talking to you, father, although

It is quiet here in the Midwest, where a small wind,

The size of a wrist, wakes the cold again—

Which may be all that's left of you & me.

When I left home at seventeen, I left for good.

That pale haze of stars goes on & on,

Like laughter that has found a final, silent shape

On a black sky. It means everything

It cannot say. Look, it's empty out there, & cold.

Cold enough to reconcile

Even a father, even a son.

SOUTH

—for Matthew Graham

I will begin with this moth,

Its tan wings as unchanging

As the palm fronds that must still

Hang above the room I slept

In as a child, through the late,

Decaying sun of summer

Afternoons. I will focus

All my attention, now, on

The four round & delicate

Spots on each of these stiff wings—

Insignias darker than

Coffee, & I will not think

Of the way something dark, &

Utterly simple, this cup

Of coffee, trembles & then

Goes still a moment as I

Hold it, & stare past it now

A long time until I am

Remembering that woman—

How still she was the last night

We slept together—that house

We'd entered with the sudden

Giving of a door after

A year away, & a sense,

Overwhelming as the smell

Of dusk mixed with rain, that it

Belonged to no one, or rain—

The fields stretching away

On all sides of it, & those

Sparse, still trees, cottonwoods, in

The distance. And except for

A slight shuddering of hips

That said good-bye before we

Should have said anything, she

Was too knowing to talk, &,

After we had sighed, dressed, &

Turned carefully away from

Each other forever, she

Looked out a window, her face

Tilted slightly as if held

There by the quiet lights from

A town. Like light, she desired

Nothing. Sometimes, when I can

Imagine myself as that

Woman, I feel beautiful

For a moment, &, if that

Beauty continues, afraid.

It does no good to know that,

At eighteen, I was afraid

Of everything. That other

Fear is different. And whatever

else I left, I left

Her at eighteen, naive, free,

Riding the old Norfolk&

Western through Virginia

And Kentucky, & it was

Not even painful. I sat

In the dining car before

A crystal pitcher of ice

Water & a vase full of

Marigolds & daisies &

Watched the flowers & water

Tremble as the train went on

Slowly over bridges, &

A black porter passed, a fine

Sweat already beading his

Upper lip & forehead as

He moved, serene as habit,

A small brass gong in his hand.

And whatever youth I had—

Whatever went out of me

In a fake laughter as I

Sat alone, hearing all its

Hollowness on that train—did

Not come back in the one raw

Breath dreamed, & drawn in slowly

A moment later, the first

Changed breath of a man. And I

Have not seen that boy I once

Was, gasping over what he

Thought was only a girl's final

Nakedness, unless he is

Here, in the form of this moth

On a dark sill—the design

On its wings not wallpaper

In the room where we did not

Sleep, but more intricately

Conceived, a lost design whose

Silence & austere moons might

Stand for anything now gone:

*

I think of that train ride past

Shacks, past plantation houses

White but aging in the sun

With one or two broken columns,

Stationary yet falling

Against the tough, undying,

Green adolescence of what

Looked like a jungled growth of

Willows, hickories, & ravines

Darkening as I glanced down;

Past junkyards embracing swamps;

Past towns so poor they were not

There, except for some grief that

Made them swell a moment beside

Those tracks, only to vanish—

A few lights slipping backward—

That was my time, or no one's,

And, lost in myself as that

Train slowed, I felt my eyes look

Out & widen until they

Took in each passing station—

Widows, soldiers, a woman

In a flowered housedress with

One leg missing, all those who

Waited, & who are now like

Photographs, still, perfect,

Staring back at me with a

Vague insolence or distrust,

And not about to be changed

By books, or revolutions.

A gray tin awning kept the

Rain off their tilted faces

Then, & they had beautiful

Faces, thin or mottled by

The sudden flaring of a match

That someone held to light his

Wife's cigarette…. They have all

Disappeared into movies,

Into tract homes & armies,

Cemeteries, calendars

Yellowing in offices,

The poultry processing plants

Of the New South, where they lose

Their dignity & fingers

To dead hens & clipping shears….

That train I rode is scrap iron

Or smoke lifting in the wind….

The woman I had slept with

Will turn forty this August

In a factory shaded

By tin, dark maples, sky; she

Wrings the neck of a hen, &

Stares into its clear eye, &

Stares & stares at it until

She will never laugh again….

My home is a speck of dust

Glimpsed suddenly in a shaft

Of sunlight, & then gone in

A lost California as

I write this out, as always,

In longhand & in black ink,

Living one block from the sea.

Maybe, if I had a choice,

I would remember no one,

But walk on the frail water

Over the floating floors of

A madhouse until time sang

Inside my blood as if to

Cast my blood on wind, & brick.

But this is my life, no one

Else's, & what I notice

This morning is only this

Moth dead from its dumb, three-day

Efforts to fly against, &

Out of, a screened-in porch

In summer, when the hard spots

On each wing are still, empty,

And look as if no one, nothing,

Could ever decipher such

Markings, or rub them away….

They are a beautiful truth

Men mount behind glass, & then

Ignore, talking of trim yachts,

Taxes, a chilled white Bordeaux.

Young, I used to envy those

Men: behind their dark, polished

Limousines perfection lurked.

I thought they were born perfect.

Slowly, I began to see

Things had been arranged this way,

And finally saw that they could

Believe only in irony, Mozart,

slums, & the best schools.

Today in the news I read of

Irish soldiers starving in

The Belfast Maze, & how, at

The end of fasting, their bones,

With no muscles left to hold

Them back, could slice their skin to

Pieces as they sleep, & turn

In their sleep. They still won't eat,

But lie silently as glass

Shattered in houses, or small

Hawks that have fallen a long

Way, broken or frozen blind

By snow, their eyes wide open

But no longer noticing

The simplest detail, a fly,

A drop of water, the smoke

Of some passing train scrawled on

A sky that stays there, above

Any reason for a sky.

IRISH MUSIC

Now in middle age, my blood like a thief who

Got away, unslain, & the trees hung again in the grim,

Cheap embroidery of leaves, I come back to the white roads,

The intersections in their sleeves of dust,

And vines like woodwinds twisted into shapes

For playing different kinds of silence.

Just when my hearing was getting perfect, singular

As an orphan's shard of mirror, they

Change the music into something I

No longer follow.

But how like them to welcome me home this way:

The house with its doorstep finally rotted away,

And carted off for a stranger's firewood,

And yet, behind the window there,

A woman bent over a map of her childhood, but still

A real map, that shows her people's

Ireland like a bonnet for the mad on top of

Plenty of ocean.

Hunger kept those poor relations traveling until

They almost touched the sea again,

And settled.

And there have been changes, even here.

In Parlier, California,

The band in the park still plays the same song,

But with a fresher strain of hopelessness.

This, too, will pass.

That is the message, always, of its threadbare refrain,

The message, too, of what one chooses to forget

About this place: the Swedish tail gunner who,

After twenty missions in the Pacific, chopped off

His own left hand

To get back home. No one thinks of him;

Not even I believe he found another reason, maybe,

For all left hands. So memory sires

Oblivion—this settlement of sheds, & weeds,

Where the last exile which the bloodstream always sang

Comes down to a matter of a few sparrows hopping

On & off a broken rain gutter, or downspout, & behind them,

A barn set up on a hill & meant to stay there,

Ignoring the sky

With the certainty they bolted into the crossbeams—

The whole thing

Towering over the long silent

Farmer & his wife; & that still house

Where their fingers have remembered, for fifty years,

Just where to touch the bannister; & then the steps,

That, one day, led up to me. Come home,

Say the blackened, still standing chimneys, & the missing bell

Above the three-room schoolhouse—

You've inherited all there is: the ironic,

Rueful smile of a peasant who's extinct,

Who nods, understanding, too well, the traveler,

And who orders another shot of schnapps

While his wife, pregnant, angry, puts both hands

Under her chin, & waits up.

And always, I pack the car, I answer no….

When my own son was next to nothing,

He, too, would wait up with us,

Awake with hands already wholly formed,

And no larger than twin question marks in the book I closed,

One day, in a meadow,

When I reached for her—above the silent town,

Above the gray, decaying smoke of the vineyards.

A stranger who saw us there might have said:

I saw two people naked on your land.

But afterward, our pulses

Already lulling & growing singular, my eyes

Closed on that hill, I saw

A playground, mothers chatting; water falling because

It was right to be falling, over a cliff; & the way

Time & the lights of all home towns grew still

In that tense shape of water just before it fell…

I watched it a long time,

And, for no reason I could name, turned away from it,

To take that frail path along a mountainside—

Then passed through alder, spruce, & stunted pine,

Stone & a cold wind,

Up to the empty summit.

FAMILY ROMANCE

“Dressed to die…”

—Dylan Thomas

Sister once of weeds & a dark water that held still

In ditches reflecting the odd,

Abstaining clouds that passed, & kept

Their own counsel, we

Were different, we kept our own counsel.

Outside the tool shed in the noon heat, while our father

Ground some piece of metal

That would finally fit, with grease & an hour of pushing,

The needs of the mysterious Ford tractor,

We argued out, in adolescence,

Whole systems of mathematics, ethics,

And finally agreed that altruism,

Whose long vowel sounded like the pigeons,

Roosting stupidly & about to be shot

In the barn, was impossible

If one was born a Catholic. The Swedish

Lutherans, whom the nuns called

“Statue smashers,” the Japanese on

Neighboring farms, were, we guessed,

A little better off….

When I was twelve, I used to stare at weeds

Along the road, at the way they kept trembling

Long after a car had passed;

Or at gnats in families hovering over

Some rotting peaches, & wonder why it was

I had been born a human.

Why not a weed, or a gnat?

Why not a horse, or a spider? And why an American?

I did not think that anything could choose me

To be a Larry Levis before there even was

A Larry Levis. It was strange, but not strange enough

To warrant some design.

On the outside,

The barn, with flaking paint, was still off-white.

Inside, it was always dark, all the way up

To the rafters where the pigeons moaned,

I later thought, as if in sexual complaint,

Or sexual abandon; I never found out which.

When I walked in with a 12-gauge & started shooting,

They fell, like gray fruit, at my feet—

Fat, thumping things that grew quieter

When their eyelids, a softer gray, closed,

Part of the way, at least,

And their friends or lovers flew out a kind of skylight

Cut for loading hay.

I don't know, exactly, what happened then.

Except my sister moved to Switzerland.

My brother got a job

With Colgate-Palmolive.

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