April 15, 2006: There Are Two Worlds, Larry Levis
There Are Two Worlds
Larry Levis
Perhaps the ankle of a horse is holy.
Crossing the Mississippi at dusk, Clemens thought
Of a sequel in which Huck Finn, in old age, became
A hermit, & insane. And never wrote it.
And perhaps all that he left out is holy.
The river, anyway, became a sacrament when
He spoke of it, even though
The last ten chapters were a failure he devised
To please America, & make his lady
Happy: to buy her silk, furs, & jewels with
Hues no one in Hannibal had ever seen.
There, above the river, if
The pattern of the stars is a blueprint for a heaven
Left unfinished,
I also believe the ankle of a horse,
In the seventh furlong, is as delicate as the fine lace
Of faith, & therefore holy.
I think it was only Twain’s cynicism, the smell of a river
Lingering in his nostrils forever, that kept
His humor alive to the end.
I don’t know how he managed it.
I used to make love to a woman, who,
When I left, would kiss the door she held open for me,
As if instead of me, as if she already missed me.
I would stand there in the cold air, breathing it,
Amused by her charm, which was, like the scent of a river,
Provocative, the dusk & first lights along the shore.
Should I say my soul went mad for a year, &
Could not sleep? To whom should I say so?
She was gentle, & intended no harm.
If the ankle of a horse is holy, & if it fails
In the stretch & the horse goes down, &
The jockey in the bright shout of his silks
Is pitched headlong onto
The track, & maimed, & if later, the horse is
Destroyed, & all that is holy
Is also destroyed: hundreds of bones & muscles that
Tried their best to be pure flight, a lyric
Made flesh, then
I would like to go home, please.
Even though I betrayed it, & left, even though
I might be, at such a time as I am permitted
To go back to my wife, my son — no one, or
No more than a stone in a pasture full
Of stones, full of the indifferent grasses,
(& Huck Finn insane by then & living alone)
It will be, it might be still,
A place where what can only remain holy grazes, &
Where men might, also, approach with soft halters,
And, having no alternative, lead that fast world
Home — though it is only to the closed dark of stalls,
And though the men walk ahead of the horses slightly
Afraid, & at times in awe of their
Quickness, & how they have nothing to lose, especially
Now, when the first stars appear slowly enough
To be counted, & the breath of horses makes white signatures
On the air: Last Button, No Kidding, Brief Affair —
And the air is colder.
[On this lovely Saturday, one of my all-time favorite poems. Larry
Levis is very good at weaving together a bunch of disparate elements
into something complex and lovely and distinct: here it’s the idea of
holiness, and Huckleberry Finn (from which Hemingway says all modern
American literature comes), and the decay or dissolution of beautiful
things, and the river, and the South, and horses, and sorrow, and
contentment.
…. or such is my guess anyway! I can read this poem over and over
and I’m still not sure I know what it’s getting at, but I think that’s
probably what makes it great.]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: America, Allen Ginsberg
