Family Romance

“Dressed to die ... ”
—Dylan Thomas

Sister once of weeds & a dark water that held still

In ditches reflecting the odd,

Abstaining clouds that passed, & kept

Their own counsel, we

Were different, we kept our own counsel.

Outside the tool shed in the noon heat, while our father

Ground some piece of metal

That would finally fit, with grease & an hour of pushing,

The needs of the mysterious Ford tractor,

We argued out, in adolescence,

Whole systems of mathematics, ethics,

And finally agreed that altruism,

Whose long vowel sounded like the pigeons,

Roosting stupidly & about to be shot

In the barn, was impossible

If one was born a Catholic. The Swedish

Lutherans, whom the nuns called

“Statue smashers,” the Japanese on

Neighboring farms, were, we guessed,

A little better off ....

When I was twelve, I used to stare at weeds

Along the road, at the way they kept trembling

Long after a car had passed;

Or at gnats in families hovering over

Some rotting peaches, & wonder why it was

I had been born a human.

Why not a weed, or a gnat?

Why not a horse, or a spider? And why an American?

I did not think that anything could choose me

To be a Larry Levis before there even was

A Larry Levis. It was strange, but not strange enough

To warrant some design.

On the outside,

The barn, with flaking paint, was still off-white.

Inside, it was always dark, all the way up

To the rafters where the pigeons moaned,

I later thought, as if in sexual complaint,

Or sexual abandon; I never found out which.

When I walked in with a 12-gauge & started shooting,

They fell, like gray fruit, at my feet—

Fat, thumping things that grew quieter

When their eyelids, a softer gray, closed,

Part of the way, at least,

And their friends or lovers flew out a kind of skylight

Cut for loading hay.

I don’t know, exactly, what happened then.

Except my sister moved to Switzerland.

My brother got a job

With Colgate-Palmolive.

He was selling soap in Lodi, California.

Later, in his car, & dressed

To die, or live again, forever,

I drove to my own, first wedding.

I smelled the stale boutonniere in my lapel,

A deceased young flower.

I wondered how my brother’s Buick

Could go so fast, &,

Still questioning, or catching, a last time,

An old chill from childhood,

I thought: why me, why her, & knew it wouldn’t last.

Copyright Credit: Larry Levis, “Family Romance” from Winter Stars. Copyright © 1985 by Larry Levis. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, www.upress.pitt.edu.

Source: Winter Stars (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985)