Heaven
by Philip Levine
If you were twenty-seven
and had done time for beating
our ex-wife and had
no dreams you remembered
in the morning, you might
lie on your bed and listen
to a mad canary sing
and think it all right to be
there every Saturday
ignoring your neighbors, the streets,
the signs that said join,
and the need to be helping.
You might build, as he did,
a network of golden ladders
so that the bird could roam
on all levels of the room;
you might paint the ceiling blue,
the floor green, and shade
the place you called the sun
so that things came softly to order
when the light came on.
He and the bird lived
in the fine weather of heaven;
they never aged, they
never tired or wanted
all through that war,
but when it was over
and the nation had been saved,
he knew they’d be hunted.
He knew, as you would too,
that he’d be laid off
for not being braver
and it would do no good
to show how he had taken
clothespins and cardboard
and made each step safe.
It would do no good
to have been one of the few
that climbed higher and higher
even in time of war,
for now there would be the poor
asking for their share,
and hurt men in uniforms,
and no one to believe
that heaven was really here.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- As if by Sara Herlihy
- Sonnet 144: Two loves I have, of comfort and despair by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Британишский – Горный институт
- Владимир Маяковский – Плюшкин
- Robert Burns: O Bonie Was Yon Rosy Brier:
- Олег Бундур – Сломанное дерево
- By Broad Potomac’s Shore. by Walt Whitman
- Traveling
- Cologne by Samuel Coleridge
- Robert Burns: Inscribed On A Work Of Hannah More’s: Presented to the Author by a Lady.
- A Memory by William Allingham
- A Child’s Evening Prayer by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Василий Жуковский – Элизиум
- Владимир Высоцкий – Мы вместе грабили одну и ту же хату
- Алексей Жемчужников – Сословные речи
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