Elegy by Larry Levis

Author:Larry Levis [Levis, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Poetry
ISBN: 9780822990987
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

And the one called Dead Rat & the one called Camelias;

We go without a trace, I am thinking.

Today you were lying in bed, drinking tea, reading the newspaper,

A look of concentration on your face, of absorption in some

Story or other.

It looked so peaceful, you reading, the bed, the sunlight over everything.

There is a blueprint of something never finished, something I'll never

Find my way out of, some web where the light rocks, back & forth,

Holding me in a time that's gone, bee at the windowsill & the cold

Coming back as it has to, tapping at the glass.

The figure in the hourglass & the body swinging in the rhythm of its work.

The body reclining in bed, forgetting what it is, & who.

While the night goes on with its work, the stars & the shapes they make,

Cold vein in the leaf & in the wind,

What are we but what we offer up?

Gifts we give, things for oblivion to look at, & puzzle over, & set aside,

Oblivion resting his cheek against a child's striped rubber ball

In the photograph I have of him, head on the table & resting his cheek

Against the cool surface of the ball, the one that is finished spinning, the one

He won't give back.

Oblivion who has my face in the photograph, my cheek resting

Against a child's striped ball.

Oblivion with his blown fires, & empty towns…

Oblivion who would be nothing without us, I am thinking,

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