A Sleepless Night
by Philip Levine
April, and the last of the plum blossoms
scatters on the black grass
before dawn. The sycamore, the lime,
the struck pine inhale
the first pale hints of sky.
An iron day,
I think, yet it will come
dazzling, the light
rise from the belly of leaves and pour
burning from the cups
of poppies.
The mockingbird squawks
from his perch, fidgets,
and settles back. The snail, awake
for good, trembles from his shell
and sets sail for China. My hand dances
in the memory of a million vanished stars.
A man has every place to lay his head.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Memory
- Scented Herbage of My Breast. by Walt Whitman
- The tragic tale of Bobby Magee by Ross D Tyler
- Алексей Толстой – Против течения
- Casualty by Winifred Mary Letts
- Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner by Robert Burns
- The Nuclear Ghost Towns
- Jubal and Tubal Cain by Rudyard Kipling
- The Last Department by Rudyard Kipling
- Earth! my Likeness! by Walt Whitman
- Absence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Олег Григорьев – Жена торговала колбасой
- In A Letter To C. P. Esq. Ill With The Rheumatism by William Cowper
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- Владимир Орлов – Ночной листок
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Philip Levine ( 1928 – 2015) was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012