Berenda Slough
by Philip Levine
Earth and water without form,
change, or pause: as if the third
day had not come, this calm norm
of chaos denies the Word.
One sees only a surface
pocked with rushes, the starved clumps
pressed between water and space —
rootless, perennial stumps
fixed in position, entombed
in nothing; it is too late
to bring forth branches, to bloom
or die, only the long wait
lies ahead, a parody
of perfection. Who denies
this is creation, this sea
constant before the stunned eye’s
insatiable gaze, shall find
nothing he can comprehend.
Here the mind beholds the mind
as it shall be in the end.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- A Night Thought by William Wordsworth
- Interrupted Meditation by Robert Hass
- Farmers Market by Mary TallMountain
- Константин Бальмонт – На мотив экклезиаста
- Федор Сологуб – Круг начертан, и Сивилла
- If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain’d poem – John Keats poems
- They Did Not Expect This by Vernon Scannell
- English Poetry. Robert William Service. My Room. Роберт Уильям Сервис.
- Owen Aherne And His Dancers by William Butler Yeats
- Lord when the wise men came from farr by Sidney Godolphin
- Untitled XXIII by Yunus Emre
- Жан де Лафонтен – Амур и Безумие
- Алексей Плещеев – На память
- The Instructor by Rudyard Kipling
- By the Lake by Tu Fu
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