Belle Isle, 1949
by 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,
melted snow. I remember going under
hand in hand with a Polish highschool girl
I’d never seen before, and the cries
our breath made caught at the same time
on the cold, and rising through the layers
of darkness into the final moonless atmosphere
that was this world, the girl breaking
the surface after me and swimming out
on the starless waters towards the lights
of Jefferson Ave. and the stacks
of the old stove factory unwinking.
Turning at last to see no island at all
but a perfect calm dark as far
as there was sight, and then a light
and another riding low out ahead
to bring us home, ore boats maybe, or smokers
walking alone. Back panting
to the gray coarse beach we didn’t dare
fall on, the damp piles of clothes,
and dressing side by side in silence
to go back where we came from.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Firesong by Sylvia Plath
- Screw-Guns by Rudyard Kipling
- Memorials of A Tour In Scotland, 1803 I. Departure From The Vale Of Grasmere, August 1803 by William Wordsworth
- Off Mesolongi poem – Alfred Austin
- To an Early Daffodil poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Ladies And Gentlemen In Outer Space by Ron Padgett
- What Work Is by Philip Levine
- Robert Burns: O Bonie Was Yon Rosy Brier:
- On Visiting The Tomb Of Burns poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Британишский – Первая послевоенная осень
- The Tour by Sylvia Plath
- Augustus Gloop… by Roald Dahl
- Valedictory poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Balin and Balan poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
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