I Won, You Lost
by Philip Levine
The last of day gathers
in the yellow parlor
and drifts like fine dust
across the face of
the gilt-framed mirror
I ofien prayed to.
An old man’s room
without him, a room I
came back to again
and again to steal
cigarettes and loose change,
to open cans of sardines,
to break open crackers
and share what he had.
Something is missing.
The cut glass ashtray
is here and overflowing,
the big bottle of homemade,
the pack of English Ovals,
the new red bicycle deck
wrapped in cellophane
and gold edged, the dishes
crusted with the last snack.
The music is gone. The lilt
of his worn voice broken
with the weight of all
those lost languages —
“If you knew Solly like
I knew Solly, oy oy
oy what a girl.” That music
made new each day and absent
forever from the corners
ofrooms like this one
darkening with dusk.
The music a boy would laugh
at until it went out
and days began and ended
without the banging fist,
without the old truths
of blood and water, without
the loud cries of I won,
you lost, without song.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Английская поэзия. Редьярд Киплинг. «Расходы и поступления». (1919-1926). 9. Джейн выходит замуж. Rudyard Kipling. «Debits and Credits». (1919-1926). 9. Jane’s Marriage
- Ольга Берггольц – В доме Павлова
- A Dialogue Between Thyrsis And Dorinda poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind by William Shakespeare
- the_man_that_poetry_made.html
- Sonet 52 by William Alexander
- Come, come thou bleak December wind (fragment) by Samuel Coleridge
- Unanswered
- Returned To Say by William Stafford
- Ярослав Смеляков – Хорошая девочка Лида
- Carrion Comfort poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Blackmwore Maidens by William Barnes
- The Earth Trembles by Shahida Latif
- The Bride-Cake by Robert Herrick
- Outside the Window, Snow
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