Bitterness
by Philip Levine
Here in February, the fine
dark branches of the almond
begin to sprout tiny clusters
of leaves, sticky to the touch.
Not far off, about the length
of my morning shadow, the grass
is littered with the petals
of the plum that less than
a week ago blazed, a living
candle in the hand of earth.
I was living far off two years
ago, fifteen floors above
119th Street when I heard
a love of my young manhood
had died mysteriously in
a public ward. I did not
go out into the streets to
walk among the cold, sullen
poor of Harlem, I did not
turn toward the filthy window
to question a distant pale sky.
I did not do anything.
The grass is coming back, some
patches already bright, though
at this hour still silvered
with dew. By noon I can stand
sweating in the free air, spading
the difficult clay for the bare
roots of a pear or apple that
will give flower and fruit longer
than I care to think about.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Ольга Седакова – В винном отделе
- The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
- Sonnet 80: O, how I faint when I of you do write by William Shakespeare
- Dawn Revisited by Rita Dove
- With Antecedents. by Walt Whitman
- The Taxi poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Юрий Верховский – Ах, душечка моя, как нынче мне светло
- Spilt Milk by William Butler Yeats
- On Messrs Hussey and Coffin by Phillis Wheatley
- Think of the Soul. by Walt Whitman
- To Emily Dickinson by Yvor Winters
- On King Arthur’s Round Table at Winchester by Thomas Warton
- Metamorphosis by Shaunna Harper
- Certain Maxims Of Hafiz by Rudyard Kipling
- Effrontery by Satish Verma
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