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The Transfiguration
© Edwin Muir
So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists
Long Long Ago
© Robert Desnos
Long long ago I went through the castle of leaves
Yellowing slowly in the moss
And far away barnacles clung desperately to rocks in the sea
Your memory better still your tender presence was there too
To an Absent Lover
© Helen Hunt Jackson
That so much change should come when thou dost go,
Is mystery that I cannot ravel quite.
The very house seems dark as when the light
Of lamps goes out. Each wonted thing doth grow
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.
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.
Magpiety
© Philip Levine
You pull over to the shoulder
of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
where you were going
Sierra Kid
© Philip Levine
I passed Slimgullion, Morgan Mine,
Camp Seco, and the rotting Lode.
Dark walls of sugar pine --,
And where I left the road
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
House Of Silence
© Philip Levine
The winter sun, golden and tired,
settles on the irregular army
of bottles. Outside the trucks
jostle toward the open road,
Once
© Philip Levine
Hungry and cold, I stood in a doorway
on Delancey Street in 1946
as the rain came down. The worst part is this
is not from a bad movie. I'd read Dos Passos'
Everything
© Philip Levine
Lately the wind burns
the last leaves and evening
comes too late to be
of use, lately I learned
The Dead
© Philip Levine
A good man is seized by the police
and spirited away. Months later
someone brags that he shot him once
through the back of the head
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."
Night Words
© Philip Levine
after Juan Ramon
A child wakens in a cold apartment.
The windows are frosted. Outside he hears
words rising from the streets, words he cannot
I Won, You Lost
© Philip Levine
The last of day gathers
in the yellow parlor
and drifts like fine dust
across the face of
Late Light
© Philip Levine
Rain filled the streets
once a year, rising almost
to door and window sills,
battering walls and roofs
The Victor Dog
© James Merrill
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.
Pine Forest
© Gabriela Mistral
Let us go now into the forest.
Trees will pass by your face,
and I will stop and offer you to them,
but they cannot bend down.
Kaspar Is Dead
© Jean Hans Arp
alas our good kaspar is dead.
who will bury a burning flag in the wings of the clouds who will pull
black wool over our eyes day by day.
who will turn the coffee mills in the primal barrel.
