All Poems
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The Distant Winter
© Philip Levine
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,
To My Native Land
© Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
My country! In thy days of glory past
A beauteous halo circled round thy brow
Told
© 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
Montjuich
© Philip Levine
"Hill of Jews," says one,
named for a cemetery
long gone."Hill of Jove,"
says another, and maybe
In A Light Time
© 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
Gangrene
© 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
Berenda Slough
© 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.
In A Vacant House
© 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:
Green Thumb
© 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.
Then
© 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
Passing Out
© Philip Levine
The doctor fingers my bruise.
"Magnificent," he says, "black
at the edges and purple
cored." Seated, he spies for clues,
gingerly probing the slack
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull
The Grave Of The Kitchen Mouse
© Philip Levine
The stone says "Coors"
The gay carpet says "Camels"
Spears of dried grass
The little sticks the children gathered
The leaves the wind gathered
Small Game
© Philip Levine
In borrowed boots which don't fit
and an old olive greatcoat,
I hunt the corn-fed rabbit,
game fowl, squirrel, starved bobcat,
Salts And Oils
© Philip Levine
In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog
believing it was Peking duck. Later,
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
The Turning
© Philip Levine
Unknown faces in the street
And winter coming on. I
Stand in the last moments of
The city, no more a child,
Magpiety
© Philip Levine
You pull over to the shoulder
of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
where you were going
Something Has Fallen
© Philip Levine
Something has fallen wordlessly
and holds still on the black driveway. You find it, like a jewel,
among the empty bottles and cans where the dogs toppled the garbage.
You pick it up, not sure if it is stone or wood
