House Of Silence
by Philip Levine
The winter sun, golden and tired,
settles on the irregular army
of bottles. Outside the trucks
jostle toward the open road,
outside it’s Saturday afternoon,
and young women in black pass by
arm in arm. This bar
is the house of silence, and we drink
to silence without raising our voices
in the old way. We drink to doors
that don’t open, to the four walls
that dose their eyes, hands that run,
fingers that count change, toes
that add up to ten. Suspended
as we are between our business
and our rest, we feel the sudden peace
of wine and the agony of stale bread.
Columbus sailed from here 30 years ago
and never wrote home. On Saturdays
like this the phone still rings for him.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Федор Сологуб – Короткая радость сгорела
- Your Poems on My Patio by Martina Reisz Newberry
- Зинаида Александрова – Ветер на речке
- Portrait of Rage and Age poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
- Crow’s Nerve Fails by Ted Hughes
- Poem65
- К той, что названа Кариной
- By Broad Potomac’s Shore. by Walt Whitman
- Галина Гампер – Здесь сегодня все пошло с молотка
- Robert Burns: Inscription: Written on the blank leaf of a copy of the last edition of my poems, presented to the Lady whom, in so many fictitious reveries of passion, but with the most ardent sentiments of real friendship, I have so often sung under the name of-“Chloris.”
- Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn by Robert Burns
- Mafeking poem – Alfred Austin
- Юрий Верховский – Есть имена, таинственны и стары
- Lucky by Tony Hoagland
- Вера Полозкова – Есть дерево, в лесу всего древней
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