You Can Have It by Philip Levine
You Can Have It by Philip Levine My brother comes home from work and climbs the stairs to our room. I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop one by one. You can have it, he says. The moonlight streams in the window and his unshaven face is whitened like the face of […]
Wisteria by Philip Levine
Wisteria by Philip Levine The first purple wisteria I recall from boyhood hung on a wire outside the windows of the breakfast room next door at the home of Steve Pisaris. I loved his tall, skinny daughter, or so I thought, and I would wait beside the back door, prostrate, begging to be taken in. […]
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine 1 We live here because the houses are clean, the lawns run right to the street and the streets run away. No one walks here. No one wakens at night or dies. The cars sit open-eyed in the driveways. The lights are on all day. 2 At home […]
What Work Is by Philip Levine
What Work Is by Philip Levine We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is–if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to […]
Waking In March by Philip Levine
Waking In March by Philip Levine Last night, again, I dreamed my children were back at home, small boys huddled in their separate beds, and I went from one to the other listening to their breathing — regular, almost soundless — until a white light hardened against the bedroom wall, the light of Los Angeles […]
Told by Philip Levine
Told by Philip Levine The air lay soffly on the green fur of the almond, it was April and I said, I begin again but my hands burned in the damp earth the light ran between my fingers a black light like no other this was not home, the linnet settling on the oleander the […]
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow. Out of the gray hills Of industrial barns, out of rain, […]
Then by Philip Levine
Then by Philip Levine A solitary apartment house, the last one before the boulevard ends and a dusty road winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor through the dusty windows Karen beholds the elegant couples walking arm in arm in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, and she is waiting […]
The New World by Philip Levine
The New World by Philip Levine A man roams the streets with a basket of freestone peaches hollering, “Peaches, peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale.” My grandfather in his prime could outshout the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles along the river. Hamtramck hungered for yellow freestone peaches, downriver wakened from a dream of […]
The Helmet by Philip Levine
The Helmet by Philip Levine All the way on the road to Gary he could see where the sky shone just out of reach and smell the rich smell of work as strong as money, but when he got there the night was over. People were going to work and back, the sidewalks were lakes […]
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine from an officer’s diary during the last war I The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids. “Stephan! Stephan!” The rattling orderly Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands: Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea, Yesterday’s napkins, and an opened letter. “Your asthma’s bad, old man.” […]
Gangrene by Philip Levine
Gangrene by Philip Levine Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. Zola, J’accuse One was kicked in the stomach until he vomited, then made to put back into his mouth what they had brought forth; when he tried to drown in his own stew he was recovered. “You […]
Noon by Philip Levine
Noon by Philip Levine I bend to the ground to catch something whispered, urgent, drifting across the ditches. The heaviness of flies stuttering in orbit, dirt ripening, the sweat of eggs. There are small streams the width ofa thumb running in the villages of sheaves, whole eras of grain wakening on the stalks, a roof […]
Making Light Of It by Philip Levine
Making Light Of It by Philip Levine I call out a secret name, the name of the angel who guards my sleep, and light grows in the east, a new light like no other, as soft as the petals of the blown rose in late summer. Yes, it is late summer in the West. Even […]
Making It Work by Philip Levine
Making It Work by Philip Levine 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro along a conveyor belt, slow fish speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator patching the asbestos gas lines as big around as the thick waist of an oak tree. “These here are the veins of the place, stuff inside’s […]
Magpiety by Philip Levine
Magpiety by Philip Levine You pull over to the shoulder of the two-lane road and sit for a moment wondering where you were going in such a hurry. The valley is burned out, the oaks dream day and night of rain that never comes. At noon or just before noon the short shadows are gray […]
Mad Day In March by Philip Levine
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 […]
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School–Detroit, 1942 by Philip Levine
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School–Detroit, 1942 by Philip Levine He made a line on the blackboard, one bold stroke from right to left diagonally downward and stood back to ask, looking as always at no one in particular, “What have I done?” From the back of the room Freddie shouted, […]
Late Moon by Philip Levine
Late Moon by Philip Levine 2 a.m. December, and still no mon rising from the river. My mother home from the beer garden stands before the open closet her hands still burning. She smooths the fur collar, the scarf, opens the gloves crumpled like letters. Nothing is lost she says to the darkness, nothing. The […]
Late Light by Philip Levine
Late Light by Philip Levine Rain filled the streets once a year, rising almost to door and window sills, battering walls and roofs until it cleaned away the mess we’d made. My father told me this, he told me it ran downtown and spilled into the river, which in turn emptied finally into the sea. […]
Last Words by Philip Levine
Last Words by Philip Levine If the shoe fell from the other foot who would hear? If the door opened onto a pure darkness and it was no dream? If your life ended the way a book ends with half a blank page and the survivors gone off to Africa or madness? If my life […]
Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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In The New Sun by Philip Levine
In The New Sun by Philip Levine Filaments of light slant like windswept rain. The orange seller hawks into the sky, a man with a hat stops below my window and shakes his tassels. Awake in Tetuan, the room filling with the first colors, and water running in a tub. * A row of sparkling […]
In A Vacant House by Philip Levine
In A Vacant House by Philip Levine Someone was calling someone; now they’ve stopped. Beyond the glass the rose vines quiver as in a light wind, but there is none: I hear nothing. The moments pass, or seem to pass, and the sun, risen above the old birch, steadies for the downward arch. It is […]
In A Light Time by Philip Levine
In A Light Time by Philip Levine The alder shudders in the April winds off the moon. No one is awake and yet sunlight streams across the hundred still beds of the public wards for children. At ten do we truly sleep in a blessed sleep guarded by angels and social workers? Do we dream […]
I Won, You Lost by Philip Levine
I Won, You Lost by Philip Levine The last of day gathers in the yellow parlor and drifts like fine dust across the face of the gilt-framed mirror I ofien prayed to. An old man’s room without him, a room I came back to again and again to steal cigarettes and loose change, to open […]
I Sing The Body Electric by Philip Levine
I Sing The Body Electric by Philip Levine People sit numbly at the counter waiting for breakfast or service. Today it’s Hartford, Connecticut more than twenty-five years after the last death of Wallace Stevens. I have come in out of the cold and wind of a Sunday morning of early March, and I seem to […]
How Much Earth by Philip Levine
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 […]
House Of Silence by Philip Levine
House Of Silence by Philip Levine The winter sun, golden and tired, settles on the irregular army of bottles. Outside the trucks jostle toward the open road, outside it’s Saturday afternoon, and young women in black pass by arm in arm. This bar is the house of silence, and we drink to silence without raising […]
Holy Day by Philip Levine
Holy Day by Philip Levine Los Angeles hums a little tune — trucks down the coast road for Monday Market packed with small faces blinking in the dark. My mother dreams by the open window. On the drainboard the gray roast humps untouched, the oven bangs its iron jaws, but it’s over. Before her on […]
Holding On by Philip Levine
Holding On by Philip Levine Green fingers holding the hillside, mustard whipping in the sea winds, one blood-bright poppy breathing in and out. The odor of Spanish earth comes up to me, yellowed with my own piss. 40 miles from Málaga half the world away from home, I am home and nowhere, a man who […]
Heaven by Philip Levine
Heaven by Philip Levine If you were twenty-seven and had done time for beating our ex-wife and had no dreams you remembered in the morning, you might lie on your bed and listen to a mad canary sing and think it all right to be there every Saturday ignoring your neighbors, the streets, the signs […]
Green Thumb by Philip Levine
Green Thumb by Philip Levine Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all! Take of me all you can; my average weight May make amends for this, my low estate. But do not shake, Green Thumb, as once you did My heart and liver, or […]
Gin by Philip Levine
Gin by Philip Levine The first time I drank gin I thought it must be hair tonic. My brother swiped the bottle from a guy whose father owned a drug store that sold booze in those ancient, honorable days when we acknowledged the stuff was a drug. Three of us passed the bottle around, each […]
Gangrene by Philip Levine
Gangrene by Philip Levine Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. Zola, J’accuse One was kicked in the stomach until he vomited, then made to put back into his mouth what they had brought forth; when he tried to drown in his own stew he was recovered. “You […]
For The Country by Philip Levine
For The Country by Philip Levine THE DREAM This has nothing to do with war or the end of the world. She dreams there are gray starlings on the winter lawn and the buds of next year’s oranges alongside this year’s oranges, and the sun is still up, a watery circle of fire settling into […]
Fist by Philip Levine
Fist by Philip Levine Iron growing in the dark, it dreams all night long and will not work. A flower that hates God, a child tearing at itself, this one closes on nothing. Friday, late, Detroit Transmission. If I live forever, the first clouded light of dawn will flood me in the cold streams north […]
Father by Philip Levine
Father by Philip Levine The long lines of diesels groan toward evening carrying off the breath of the living. The face of your house is black, it is your face, black and fire bombed in the first street wars, a black tooth planted in the earth of Michigan and bearing nothing, and the earth is […]