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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
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
On The Meeting Of García Lorca And Hart Crane
© Philip Levine
Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane's
been drinking and has no idea who
this curious Andalusian is, unable
even to speak the language of poetry.
Picture Postcard From The Other World
© Philip Levine
Since I don't know who will be reading
this or even if it will be read, I must
invent someone on the other end
of eternity, a distant cousin laboring
The Water's Chant
© Philip Levine
Seven years ago I went into
the High Sierras stunned by the desire
to die. For hours I stared into a clear
mountain stream that fell down
Wisteria
© Philip Levine
The first purple wisteria
I recall from boyhood hung
on a wire outside the windows
of the breakfast room next door
Where We Live Now
© Philip Levine
We live here because the houses
are clean, the lawns run
right to the street
Black Stone On Top Of Nothing
© Philip Levine
Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black ribbon
around the apartment building covering the front door.
He puts down his cane, removes his greasy fedora, and begins
to untangle the mess. His neighbors line up behind him
The Return
© Philip Levine
All afternoon my father drove the country roads
between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for
I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself,
though he would grab any unfamiliar side road
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 Red Shirt
© Philip Levine
"...his poems that no one reads anymore become dust, wind, nothing,
like the insolent colored shirt he bought to die in."
-Vargas Llosa
Any Night
© Philip Levine
Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine,
the yellowing ash, all the trees
are gone, and I was older than
all of them. I am older than the moon,
Ode For Mrs. William Settle
© Philip Levine
In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago,
a woman sits at her desk to write
me a letter. She holds a photograph
of me up to the light, one taken
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,
Smoke
© Philip Levine
Back then we called this a date, some times
a blind date, though they'd written back and forth
for weeks. What actually took place is now lost.
It's become part of the mythology of a family,
The Rains
© Philip Levine
The river rises
and the rains keep coming.
My Papa says
it can't flood for
Belle Isle, 1949
© Philip Levine
We stripped in the first warm spring night
and ran down into the Detroit River
to baptize ourselves in the brine
of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles,
