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| photo Becky Smith ©2012 |
Whitman:
“I say we had
better look our nation searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing
some deep disease.” -Democratic Vistas
“Look for me under your bootsoles.”
On Long Island, they moved my
clapboard house
Across a turnpike, & then
felt so guilty they
Named a shopping center after
me!
Now that I’m required reading
in your high schools,
Teenagers call me a fool.
Now what I sang stops
breathing.
And yet
It was only when everyone
stopped believing in me
That I began to live again—
First in the thin whine of
Montana fence wire,
Then in the transparent,
cast-off garments hung
In the windows of the poorest
families,
Then in the glad music of
Charlie Parker.
At time now,
I even come back to watch you
From the eyes of a taciturn
boy at Malibu.
Across the counter at the
beach concession stand,
I sell you hot dogs, Pepsis,
cigarettes-
My blond hair long, greasy,
& swept back
In a vain old ducktail,
deliciously
Out of style. And no one
notices.
Once I even came back as
me,
An aging homosexual who the
Tilt-a-Whirl
At county fairs, the chilled
paint on each gondola
Changing color as it picked up
speed,
And a Mardi Gras tattoo on my
left shoulder.
A few of you must have seen my
photographs,
For when I looked back,
I thought you caught the
meaning of my stare:
Still water,
Merciless.
A Kosmos. One of the roughs.
And Charlie Parker’s grave
outside Kansas City
Covered with weeds.
Leave me alone.
A father who’s outlived his
only child.
To find me now will cost you everything.
-Larry Levis, from his Winter Stars
Well, no comments for Larry Levis ?? I can start by saying I've lived the most recent 20 years in Lubbock, which makes me wonder what parts of "West Texas" you claim, sir. I recognize that road outside Eagles Nest. I know what a propane tank is, and appreciate the shadow Becky Smith photographed in late afternoon sun. I came looking for the text of "Whitman" because I was re-reading Levis in an anthology this morning. Feeling melancholy over old Uncle Walt, because just this week someone in the Blogosphere notified me I could no longer love Whitman because of some racist cock-eyed pseudo-science he repeated in letters and journals .... It chills me to think of how many ideas or fashions I might have endorsed in my life that will look moronic to future generations, eh?
ReplyDeleteSo thanks for posting "Whitman" years ago so I could find it this morning -- posted, no less, on my birthday in 2012, which of course is a meaningless coincidence but was striking enough to stir me to tap out this rambling "howdy" into space ...
The low hanging pines egged on by their mountains evening CHILL brushed the camper top. The stillness was breathless, as beautiful as the smile offering the warm red wine that had rode with us,out of the cities of hopes and howling through Red River onto the blacktop that took us to Eagles Nest just as the big orange ball made it's way behind the higher mountains.she took the pen and pad from my hand and nestled in beside me .. out on the blacktop the sound of a car pushed it's way slowly as if looking... "I'm glad we found it first " she said burying herself into me... it's so beautiful...
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