How Much Earth
by Philip Levine
Torn into light, you woke wriggling
on a woman’s palm. Halved, quartered,
shredded to the wind, you were the life
that thrilled along the underbelly
of a stone. Stilled in the frozen pond
you rinsed heaven with a sigh.
How much earth is a man.
A wall fies down and roses
rush from its teeth; in the fists
of the hungry, cucumbers sleep
their lives away, under your nails
the ocean moans in its bed.
How much earth.
The great ice fields slip
and the broken veins of an eye
startle under light, a hand is planted
and the grave blooms upward
in sunlight and walks the roads.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Владимир Британишский – Этот вечер
- The Terms In Which I Think Of Reality poem – Allen Ginsberg
- Written In Very Early Youth by William Wordsworth
- The Scissors-Grinder by Vachel Lindsay
- Guy Faux’s Night by William Barnes
- Midsummer Mobile by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Гиппиус – Закон чего? – закона нет
- Kashmiri Song
- Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams
- ‘In the Pink’ by Siegfried Sassoon
- The Pleasures Of Friendship by Stevie Smith
- Валерий Брюсов – Искушение
- Simple Heart
- Indian Weavers by Sarojini Naidu
- Константин Бальмонт – Цветок (Я цветок, и счастье аромата)
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