Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
by Philip Levine
It’s wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.
I’m to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers
that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,
suffering the consumers
who won’t meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see. The boy
who drives me along believes
that any moment I’ll fall
on my side and drum my toes
like a typewriter or squeal
and shit like a new housewife
discovering television,
or that I’ll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Who of you ever
- “‘Tis because, though in dusky bower” poem – Alfred Austin
- I turn my head by Vladimir Marku
- Mother’s Love by Nin Andrews
- Вероника Тушнова – Ты все еще тревожишься — что будет
- Morning In The Hospital Solarium by Sylvia Plath
- Perseus by Sylvia Plath
- Grace Before Song poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Robert Burns: The Five Carlins: An Election Ballad
- oh no – not another love poem! by Raj Arumugam
- A Farm-Picture. by Walt Whitman
- Seal Lullaby by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Калиф и раб
- Additions: The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s by Thomas Hardy
- Break of Day by Siegfried Sassoon
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Philip Levine ( 1928 – 2015) was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012