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Larry Levis - The Poet At Seventeen
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My youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying 
Echoes of billiards in the pool hall 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 Rajes -- 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 & 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 talked 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 on 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, the adults with their cocktails before dinner, 
The way they always seemed afraid of something, 
And sat so rigidly, although the land was theirs.
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