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 see 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 collection "Winter Stars"
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