Line Breaks & Other Violent Crimes

3.

In 1965, if anything was worth worshipping in that city,
It was the old neighborhood rife with eucalyptus & a few, brooding mulberries,
It was the lioness asleep in the zoo, unmoved by the taunts
Of children or the trash they threw, sometimes on fire for a moment, into her cage.
It was the way she endured it: heat, rain, misfortune; turning on her heels always
Away from you as if there were two worlds, as if you were lost
In this one. She could have killed a man with one swipe
Of her paw, but she did not. And that is why, in the next world,
She has come back as a poem already written for her, & hidden
In this one. This one which fills us with longing. Which bores her.
In 1965 in that city, no one knew less than a boy of nineteen, still a virgin,
Still brimming over with extinct love;
His face shining with acne he’d rubbed raw with a hand towel
To make it disappear; instead, it blistered, & later,
Looking in the mirror, he thought such blisters might be
The visible evidence of the soul. Laugh, if you want to;
After all, the next world is a lioness & she moves without history, like a lioness,
And without mistakes. Besides, it’s twenty years later.
By now that boy’s already poured his first drink of the evening;
So have you, & no tense is as sad as the future’s.
If I’m not laughing with you it’s because I’m talking to myself again:

Posted at 9:12am and tagged with: larry levis, poetry, reading levis makes me lonely in the best way, one column,.