At Bessemer
by 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
the end of a week like every week.
Out of town I found a small grove
of trees, high narrow pines, and I
sat back against the trunk of one
as the first rains began slowly.
South, the lights of Bessemer glowed
as though a new sun rose there,
but it was midnight and another shift
tooled the rolling mills. I must
have slept awhile, for someone
else was there beside me. I could
see a cigarette’s soft light,
and once a hand grazed mine, man
or woman’s I never knew. Slowly
I could feel the darkness fill
my eyes and the dream that came was
of a bright world where sunlight
fell on the long even rows of houses
and I looked down from great height
at a burned world I believed
I never had to enter. When
the true sun rose I was stiff
and wet, and there beside me was
the small white proof that someone
rolled and smoked and left me there
unharmed, truly untouched.
A hundred yards off I could hear
cars on the highway. A life
was calling to be lived, but how
and why I had still to learn.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Нападали белогвардейцы на Донецкий бассейн… (РОСТА №611)
- I like to let the word fly about by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- from In Time of War by W H Auden
- Dance Figure poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Don’t fear death poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Traveling Dream by Marge Piercy
- Robert Burns: Jamie, Come Try Me:
- Николай Языков – А. В. Тихвинскому (Как знать, куда моя дорога)
- Reconciliation. by Walt Whitman
- What I Love by Pamela L. Laskin
- The Gardener XXVI: What Comes From Your Willing Hands by Rabindranath Tagore
- Thrushes by Siegfried Sassoon
- Николай Гумилев – Юдифь
- Robert Burns: O Were My Love Yon Lilac Fair:
- Ecstasy by Sarojini Naidu
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