Karazah Karl
Come back to me! my life is young, My soul is scarcely on her way, And all the starry songs she’s sung, Are prelude to a grander lay. Come back to me! Let this song-born soul receive thee, Glowing its fondest truth to prove; Why so early did’st thou leave me, Are our heaven-grand […]
Judith
“Repent, or I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight thee with the sword of my mouth.” -Revelation ii. 16. I Ashkelon is not cut off with the remnant of a valley. Baldness dwells not upon Gaza. The field of the valley is mine, and it is clothed in verdure. The steepness of […]
Infelix
Where is the promise of my years; Once written on my brow? Ere errors, agonies and fears Brought with them all that speaks in tears, Ere I had sunk beneath my peers; Where sleeps that promise now? Naught lingers to redeem those hours, Still, still to memory sweet! The flowers that bloomed in sunny […]
Hemlock Furrows
I O crownless soul of Ishmael! Uplifting and unfolding the white tent of dreams against the sunless base of eternity! Looking up through thy dumb desolation for white hands to reach out over the shadows, downward, from the golden bastions of God’s eternal Citadel! Praying for Love to unloose the blushing bindings of his […]
Genius
“Where’er there’s a life to be kindled by love, Wherever a soul to inspire, Strike this key-note of God that trembles above Night’s silver-tongued voices of fire.” Genius is power. The power that grasps in the universe, that dives out beyond space, and grapples with the starry worlds of heaven. If genius achieves nothing, […]
Fragment
“Oh! I am sick of what I am. Of all Which I in life can ever hope to be. Angels of light be pitiful to me.” The cold chain of life presseth heavily on me tonight. The thundering pace of thought is curbed, and, like a fiery steed, dasheth against the gloomy walls of […]
Dying
I Leave me; oh! leave me, Lest I find this low earth sweeter than the skies. Leave me lest I deem Faith’s white bosom bared to the betraying arms of Death. Hush your fond voice, lest it shut out the angel trumpet-call! See my o’erwearied feet bleed for rest. Loose the clinging and the […]
Dreams Beauty
Visions of Beauty, of Light, and of Love, Born in the soul of a Dream, Lost, like the phantom-bird under the dove, When she flies over a stream- Come ye through portals where angel wings droop, Moved by the heaven of sleep? Or, are ye mockeries, crazing a soul, Doomed with its waking to […]
Depths
I Lost-lost-lost! To me, for ever, the seat near the blood of the feast. To me, for ever, the station near the Throne of Love! To me, for ever, the Kingdom of Heaven-and I the least. Oh, the least in love- The least in joy- The least in life- The least in death- The […]
Battle Stars
Alone on the hill of storms The voice of the wind shrieks through the mountain. The torrent rushes down the rocks. Red are hundred streams of the light-covered paths of the dead. Shield me in from the storm, I that am a daughter of the stars, and wear the purple and gold of bards, […]
Aspiration
Poor, impious Soul! that fixes its high hopes In the dim distance, on a throne of clouds, And from the morning’s mist would make the ropes To draw it up amid acclaim of crowds- Beware! That soaring path is lined with shrouds; And he who braves it, though of sturdy breath, May meet, half […]
Answer Me
I In from the night. The storm is lifting his black arms up to the sky. Friend of my heart, who so gently marks out the lifetrack for me, draw near to-night; Forget the wailing of the low-voiced wind: Shut out the moanings of the freezing, and the starving, and the dying, and bend […]
Adelina Patti
Thou Pleiad of the lyric world Where Pasta, Garcia shone, Come back with thy sweet voice again, And gem the starry zone. Though faded, still the vision sees The loveliest child of night, The fairest of the Pleiades, Its glory and its light. How fell with music from thy tongue The picture which it […]
You Can Have It by Philip Levine
You Can Have It by Philip Levine My brother comes home from work and climbs the stairs to our room. I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop one by one. You can have it, he says. The moonlight streams in the window and his unshaven face is whitened like the face of […]
Wisteria by Philip Levine
Wisteria by Philip Levine The first purple wisteria I recall from boyhood hung on a wire outside the windows of the breakfast room next door at the home of Steve Pisaris. I loved his tall, skinny daughter, or so I thought, and I would wait beside the back door, prostrate, begging to be taken in. […]
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine 1 We live here because the houses are clean, the lawns run right to the street and the streets run away. No one walks here. No one wakens at night or dies. The cars sit open-eyed in the driveways. The lights are on all day. 2 At home […]
What Work Is by Philip Levine
What Work Is by Philip Levine We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is–if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to […]
Waking In March by Philip Levine
Waking In March by Philip Levine Last night, again, I dreamed my children were back at home, small boys huddled in their separate beds, and I went from one to the other listening to their breathing — regular, almost soundless — until a white light hardened against the bedroom wall, the light of Los Angeles […]
Told by Philip Levine
Told by Philip Levine The air lay soffly on the green fur of the almond, it was April and I said, I begin again but my hands burned in the damp earth the light ran between my fingers a black light like no other this was not home, the linnet settling on the oleander the […]
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow. Out of the gray hills Of industrial barns, out of rain, […]
Then by Philip Levine
Then by Philip Levine A solitary apartment house, the last one before the boulevard ends and a dusty road winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor through the dusty windows Karen beholds the elegant couples walking arm in arm in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, and she is waiting […]
The New World by Philip Levine
The New World by Philip Levine A man roams the streets with a basket of freestone peaches hollering, “Peaches, peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale.” My grandfather in his prime could outshout the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles along the river. Hamtramck hungered for yellow freestone peaches, downriver wakened from a dream of […]
The Helmet by Philip Levine
The Helmet by Philip Levine All the way on the road to Gary he could see where the sky shone just out of reach and smell the rich smell of work as strong as money, but when he got there the night was over. People were going to work and back, the sidewalks were lakes […]
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine from an officer’s diary during the last war I The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids. “Stephan! Stephan!” The rattling orderly Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands: Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea, Yesterday’s napkins, and an opened letter. “Your asthma’s bad, old man.” […]
Gangrene by Philip Levine
Gangrene by Philip Levine Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. Zola, J’accuse One was kicked in the stomach until he vomited, then made to put back into his mouth what they had brought forth; when he tried to drown in his own stew he was recovered. “You […]
Noon by Philip Levine
Noon by Philip Levine I bend to the ground to catch something whispered, urgent, drifting across the ditches. The heaviness of flies stuttering in orbit, dirt ripening, the sweat of eggs. There are small streams the width ofa thumb running in the villages of sheaves, whole eras of grain wakening on the stalks, a roof […]
Making Light Of It by Philip Levine
Making Light Of It by Philip Levine I call out a secret name, the name of the angel who guards my sleep, and light grows in the east, a new light like no other, as soft as the petals of the blown rose in late summer. Yes, it is late summer in the West. Even […]
Making It Work by Philip Levine
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 […]
Magpiety by Philip Levine
Magpiety by Philip Levine You pull over to the shoulder of the two-lane road and sit for a moment wondering where you were going in such a hurry. The valley is burned out, the oaks dream day and night of rain that never comes. At noon or just before noon the short shadows are gray […]
Mad Day In March by Philip Levine
Mad Day In March by Philip Levine Beaten like an old hound Whimpering by the stove, I complicate the pain That smarts with promised love. The oilstove falls, the rain, Forecast, licks at my wound; Ice forms, clips the green shoot, And strikes the wren house mute. May commoner and king, The barren bride and […]
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School–Detroit, 1942 by Philip Levine
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School–Detroit, 1942 by Philip Levine He made a line on the blackboard, one bold stroke from right to left diagonally downward and stood back to ask, looking as always at no one in particular, “What have I done?” From the back of the room Freddie shouted, […]
Late Moon by Philip Levine
Late Moon by Philip Levine 2 a.m. December, and still no mon rising from the river. My mother home from the beer garden stands before the open closet her hands still burning. She smooths the fur collar, the scarf, opens the gloves crumpled like letters. Nothing is lost she says to the darkness, nothing. The […]
Late Light by Philip Levine
Late Light by Philip Levine Rain filled the streets once a year, rising almost to door and window sills, battering walls and roofs until it cleaned away the mess we’d made. My father told me this, he told me it ran downtown and spilled into the river, which in turn emptied finally into the sea. […]
Last Words by Philip Levine
Last Words by Philip Levine If the shoe fell from the other foot who would hear? If the door opened onto a pure darkness and it was no dream? If your life ended the way a book ends with half a blank page and the survivors gone off to Africa or madness? If my life […]
Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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In The New Sun by Philip Levine
In The New Sun by Philip Levine Filaments of light slant like windswept rain. The orange seller hawks into the sky, a man with a hat stops below my window and shakes his tassels. Awake in Tetuan, the room filling with the first colors, and water running in a tub. * A row of sparkling […]
In A Vacant House by Philip Levine
In A Vacant House by Philip Levine Someone was calling someone; now they’ve stopped. Beyond the glass the rose vines quiver as in a light wind, but there is none: I hear nothing. The moments pass, or seem to pass, and the sun, risen above the old birch, steadies for the downward arch. It is […]
In A Light Time by Philip Levine
In A Light Time by Philip Levine The alder shudders in the April winds off the moon. No one is awake and yet sunlight streams across the hundred still beds of the public wards for children. At ten do we truly sleep in a blessed sleep guarded by angels and social workers? Do we dream […]