3/10/14 Fieldworkers, Santa Rosa Road, Santa Barbara County |
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 Rajues—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 and 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 one 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, adults with their cocktails before dinner,
The
way they always seemed afraid of something,
And
sat so rigidly, although the land was theirs.
--Larry Levis
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