Time poems
/ page 670 of 792 /
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
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
A Theory Of Prosody
© Philip Levine
When Nellie, my old pussy
cat, was still in her prime,
she would sit behind me
as I wrote, and when the line
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,
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,
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'
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,
Everything
© Philip Levine
Lately the wind burns
the last leaves and evening
comes too late to be
of use, lately I learned
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
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.
Call It Music
© Philip Levine
Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
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
Gin
© 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
On The Murder Of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By The Falangist Bravo Martinez, July 12, 1936
© Philip Levine
When the Lieutenant of the Guardia de Asalto
heard the automatic go off, he turned
and took the second shot just above
the sternum, the third tore away
