Car poems
/ page 632 of 738 /
For The Country
© Philip Levine
THE DREAMThis 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
Voyages
© Philip Levine
Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart --
I walk by sedge and brown river rot
to where the old lake boats went daily out.
All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen
The New World
© Philip Levine
A man roams the streets with a basket
of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches,
peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale."
Another Song
© Philip Levine
Words go on travelling from voice
to voice while the phones are still
and the wires hum in the cold. Now
and then dark winter birds settle
I Sing The Body Electric
© Philip Levine
People sit numbly at the counter
waiting for breakfast or service.
Today it's Hartford, Connecticut
more than twenty-five years after
Songs
© Philip Levine
Dawn coming in over the fields
of darkness takes me by surprise
and I look up from my solitary road
pleased not to be alone, the birds
Bitterness
© Philip Levine
Here in February, the fine
dark branches of the almond
begin to sprout tiny clusters
of leaves, sticky to the touch.
The Present
© Philip Levine
The day comes slowly in the railyard
behind the ice factory. It broods on
one cinder after another until each
glows like lead or the eye of a dog
In The New Sun
© Philip Levine
A row of sparkling carp
iced in the new sun, odor
of first love, of childhood,
the fingers held to the nose,
or hours while the clock hummed.
Those Were The Days
© Philip Levine
The sun came up before breakfast,
perfectly round and yellow, and we
dressed in the soft light and shook out
our long blond curls and waited
Heaven
© Philip Levine
If you were twenty-seven
and had done time for beating
our ex-wife and had
no dreams you remembered
Clouds
© Philip Levine
Dawn. First light tearing
at the rough tongues of the zinnias,
at the leaves of the just born.
I Hear America Singing
© Walt Whitman
I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics-each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and
The Manuscript of Saint Alexius
© Augusta Davies Webster
But, when my father thought my words took shape
of other than boy's prattle, he grew grave,
and answered me "Alexius, thou art young,
and canst not judge of duties; but know this
thine is to serve God, living in the world."
At Bessemer
© Philip Levine
19 years old and going nowhere,
I got a ride to Bessemer and walked
the night road toward Birmingham
passing dark groups of men cursing
They Feed They Lion
© 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.
A Woman Waking
© Philip Levine
She wakens early remembering
her father rising in the dark
lighting the stove with a match
scraped on the floor. Then measuring
To a Lock of Hair
© Sir Walter Scott
Thy hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright
As in that well - remember'd night
When first thy mystic braid was wove,
And first my Agnes whisper'd love.
Rosabelle
© Sir Walter Scott
O listen, listen, ladies gay!
No haughty feat of arms I tell;
Soft is the note, and sad the lay
That mourns the lovely Rosabelle.
