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
- Exodus by Taha Muhammad Ali
- My mother was telling me by Vinko Kalinic
- Complimentary Epigram to Mrs. Riddell by Robert Burns
- Diary of a Church Mouse poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Николай Языков – Прошли младые наши годы
- Владимир Маяковский – Ты не пошел на фронт бить барона?.. (РОСТА №451)
- Long Distance II by Tony Harrison
- In the Small Hours by Wole Soyinka
- Untitled I by Yunus Emre
- Владимир Высоцкий – Живёт на свете человек
- Николай Заболоцкий – Офорт
- Валерий Брюсов – Гимн Атону
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Соме le onde
- Behavior. by Walt Whitman
- Константин Бальмонт – Над морем
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