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. Perhaps
it was only the flowers of spring
with their sickening perfumes
that had infected me. When Steve
and Sophie and the three children
packed up and made the move west,
I went on spring after spring,
leaden with desire, half-asleep,
praying to die. Now I know
those prayers were answered.
That boy died, the brick houses
deepened and darkened with rain,
age, use, and finally closed
their eyes and dreamed the sleep
of California. I learned this
only today. Wakened early
in an empty house not lately
battered by storms, I looked
for nothing. On the surface
of the rain barrel, the paled,
shredded blossoms floated.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- A Prayer For My Son by William Butler Yeats
- The Beach by Weldon Kees
- Вероника Тушнова – Я поднимаюсь по колючим склонам
- Battalion-Relief by Siegfried Sassoon
- Robert Burns: The Dean Of Faculty: A New Ballad
- Carol of Occupations. by Walt Whitman
- What the Rattlesnake Said by Vachel Lindsay
- Robert Burns: Complimentary Versicles To Jessie Lewars: On Her Recovery
- Sonnet CXXXII by William Shakespeare
- Woman by Tala Bar
- Flirting by Satish Verma
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Forevermore. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- His Last Request to Julia by Robert Herrick
- The Witching Hour by Norma Martiri
- Dissolve in kisses, I would like to dissolve in your kisses
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