Mad Day In March
by Philip Levine
Beaten like an old hound
Whimpering by the stove,
I complicate the pain
That smarts with promised love.
The oilstove falls, the rain,
Forecast, licks at my wound;
Ice forms, clips the green shoot,
And strikes the wren house mute.
May commoner and king,
The barren bride and nun
Begrudge the season’s dues.
May children curse the sun,
Sweet briar and grass refuse
To compromise the spring,
And both sower and seed
Choke on the summer’s weed.
Those promises we heard
We heard in ignorance;
The numbered days we named,
And, in our innocence,
Assumed the beast was tamed.
On a bare limb, a bird,
Alone, arrived, with wings
Frozen, holds on and sings.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- “Wishing to float” by Seema Gupta
- Breathing Stars, Inspiration and the Labyrinth of Correspondence
- Омар Хайям – Кумир мой, вылепил тебя таким гончар
- Identity of Images by Robert Desnos
- Владимир Маяковский – Власть канцелярии – вот слова “бюрократия” перевод… (РОСТА №655)
- Now Hollow Fires Burn Out to Black poem – Alfred Edward Housman
- Sonnet CXXXVI by William Shakespeare
- Forgotten Language by Shel Silverstein
- Felix Randal poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Robert Burns: To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough:
- Let The Weary World Go Round poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Буря и тишь
- The River by Sara Teasdale
- The Wind Speaks poem – Alfred Austin
- Юлия Друнина – В школе
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