…some things are not possible on the earth.
And that is why people make poems about the dead.
And the dead watch over them, until they are finished:
Until their hands feel like glass on the page,
And snow collects in the blind eyes of statues.

– Larry Levis, “For Zbigniew Herbert, Summer, 1971, Los Angeles” from The Dollmaker’s Ghost, Selected: 60-61.

Today is the last day of a 3-day Larry Levis festival at VCU, featuring readings by Philip Levine, among others. I wish I had been able to go, but I have been AWOL enough from the program.