Gangrene
by Philip Levine
Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses
calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs.
Zola, J’accuse
One was kicked in the stomach
until he vomited, then
made to put back
into his mouth what they had
brought forth; when he tried to drown
in his own stew
he was recovered. “You are
worse than a nigger or Jew,”
the helmeted one said. “You
are an intellectal.
I hate your brown
skin; it makes me sick.” The tall
intense one, his penis wired,
was shocked out of
his senses in three seconds.
Weakened, he watched them install
another battery in
the crude electric device.
The genitals
of a third were beaten with
a short wooden ruler: “Reach
for your black balls.
I’ll show you how to make love.”
When two of the beaten passed
in the hall they did not know
each other. “His face had turned
into a wound:
the nose was gone, the eyes ground
so far back into the face
they too seemed gone,
the lips, puffed pieces of cracked
blood.” None of them was asked
anything. The clerks, the police,
the booted ones, seemed content
to inflict pain,
to make, they said, each instant
memorable and exquisite,
reform the brain
through the senses. “Kiss my boot
and learn the taste of French shit.”
Reader, does the heart demand
that you bend to the live wound
as you would bend
to the familiar body
of your beloved, to kiss
the green flower
which blooms always from the ground
human and ripe with terror,
to face with love what we have
made of hatred? We must live
with what we are,
you say, is enough. I
taste death. I am among you
and I accuse
you where, secretly thrilled by
the circus of excrement,
you study my strophes or
yawn into the evening air,
tired, not amused.
Remember what you have said
when from your pacific dream
you awaken
at last, deafened by the scream
of your own stench. You are dead.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Карл Сэндберг – Молитва стали
- Юлия Друнина – Запас прочности
- Spring in Town by William Cullen Bryant
- Mr Anonymous, a life by Raj Arumugam
- Miracles. by Walt Whitman
- Sonnet 114: Or whether doth my mind, being crowned with you by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Маяковский – Дешевая распродажа
- Омар Хайям – Никто не лицезрел ни рая, ни геенны
- Ireland. by Sidney Lanier
- Transcended Land Of Love by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth by William Shakespeare
- Эмиль Верхарн – Воскресное утро
- The Complaint Of A Forsaken Indian Woman by William Wordsworth
- Salamis Quot
- Robert Burns: Epistle To Colonel De Peyster:
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