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Larry Levis - The Clearing Of The LandLarry Levis - The Clearing Of The Land
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The trees went up the hill And over it. Then the dry grasses of the pasture were Only a kind of blonde light Settling everywhere And framing the randomly strewn Outcropping of gray stone That anchored them to soil. Who were they? One in the picture, and one not, and both Scotch-Irish drifters, With nothing in common but a perfect contempt For a past; Ancestors of stumps and fallen trees and . . . One is sitting on a sorrel mare, idly tossing Small stones at the rump Of a steer that goes on grazing At tough rosettes of pasture grass And switching its tail In what is not even irritation. What I like, what I Have always liked, is the way he tosses each small Stone without thinking, without A thought for anything, not even for aiming it, The easy, arcing forearm nonchalance Like someone fly-casting. For this is what he wanted: To be among the stones, the grasses, Savoring a stony self That reminded him of no one else, And on land where that poacher, Law, Had not yet stolen through his fences, The horse beneath him twitching Its withers lightly to keep The summer flies away, And the woman in the flower print dress hemmed With stains A half mile off Is the authoress of no more than smoke rising, Her sole diary, From a distant chimney. They have perhaps a year or two Left of this Before History begins to edit them into Something without smoke or flies, something Beyond all recognition.
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