Making It Work
by Philip Levine
3-foot blue cannisters of nitro
along a conveyor belt, slow fish
speaking the language of silence.
On the roof, I in my respirator
patching the asbestos gas lines
as big around as the thick waist
of an oak tree. “These here are
the veins of the place, stuff
inside’s the blood.” We work in rain,
heat, snow, sleet. First warm
spring winds up from Ohio, I
pause at the top of the ladder
to take in the wide world reaching
downriver and beyond. Sunlight
dumped on standing and moving
lines of freight cars, new fields
of bright weeds blowing, scoured
valleys, false mountains of coke
and slag. At the ends of sight
a rolling mass of clouds as dark
as money brings the weather in.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Высоцкий – Переворот в мозгах из края в край
- Николай Карамзин – Стихи на слова, заданные мне Хлoeю: миг, картина и дверь
- The Spring passing away by Shailendra Chauhan
- You Are Mine by Pushpendra Singh Baghel
- Федор Сологуб – Либава, Либава, товарная душа
- Palm Trees By The Sea
- Paradise Lost: Book 01 poem – John Milton poems
- City Times and Other Poems
- Владимир Высоцкий – Мы живём в большом селе Большие Вилы
- Every Sect has a Faith – Har Qaum Raast Raahay poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Гиппиус – Узел
- I Have Loved Hours At Sea by Sara Teasdale
- Memory As a Hearing Aid by Tony Hoagland
- Death Divine by Nithin Purple
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