Philip Levine

First light. This misted field is the world, that man slipping the greased bolt Back and forth, that man tunneled with blood the dark smudges of whose eyes Call for sleep, calls for quiet,

A blue jay poses on a stake Meant to support an apple tree Newly planted. A strong wind On this clear cold morning Barely ruffles his tail feathers. When he turns his attention Toward

Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song In my own breath. I’m alone here In Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky Above the St. George Hotel clear, clear For New York, that

after Juan Ramon A child wakens in a cold apartment. The windows are frosted. Outside he hears Words rising from the streets, words he cannot Understand, and then the semis gear down For the

Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all! Take of me all you can; my average weight May make amends for this, my low

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

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

Early March. The cold beach deserted. My kids Home in a bare house, bundled up And listening to rock music Pirated from England. My wife Waiting for me in a bar, alone For an

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

On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa, August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a Government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent Confession

Green fingers Holding the hillside, Mustard whipping in The sea winds, one blood-bright Poppy breathing in And out. The odor Of Spanish earth comes Up to me, yellowed With my own piss. 40 miles

The stone says “Coors” The gay carpet says “Camels” Spears of dried grass The little sticks the children gathered The leaves the wind gathered The cat did not kill him The dog did not,

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

The river rises And the rains keep coming. My Papa says It can’t flood for The water can run Away as fast as It comes down. I believe Him because he’s Papa And because

It’s wonderful how I jog On four honed-down ivory toes My massive buttocks slipping Like oiled parts with each light step. I’m to market. I can smell The sour, grooved block, I can smell

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,

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

When Nellie, my old pussy Cat, was still in her prime, She would sit behind me As I wrote, and when the line Got too long she’d reach One sudden black foreleg down And

Unknown faces in the street And winter coming on. I Stand in the last moments of The city, no more a child, Only a man, one who has Looked upon his own nakedness Without

“Hill of Jews,” says one, Named for a cemetery Long gone.”Hill of Jove,” Says another, and maybe Jove stalked here Once or rests now Where so many lie Who felt God swell The earth

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

Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane’s Been drinking and has no idea who This curious Andalusian is, unable Even to speak the language of poetry. The young man who brought them Together knows both Spanish

This poem has a door, a locked door, And curtains drawn against the day, But at night the lights come on, one In each room, and the neighbors swear They hear music and the

Words go on travelling from voice To voice while the phones are still And the wires hum in the cold. Now And then dark winter birds settle Slowly on the crossbars, where huddled They

Since I don’t know who will be reading This or even if it will be read, I must Invent someone on the other end Of eternity, a distant cousin laboring Under the same faint

A good man is seized by the police And spirited away. Months later Someone brags that he shot him once Through the back of the head With a Walther 7.65, and his life Ended

People sit numbly at the counter Waiting for breakfast or service. Today it’s Hartford, Connecticut More than twenty-five years after The last death of Wallace Stevens. I have come in out of the cold

THE DREAM This has nothing to do with war Or the end of the world. She Dreams there are gray starlings On the winter lawn and the buds Of next year’s oranges alongside This

Seven years ago I went into The High Sierras stunned by the desire To die. For hours I stared into a clear Mountain stream that fell down Over speckled rocks, and then I Closed

from St. Ambrose He fears the tiger standing in his way. The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls. Like moons, the two blank eyes tug at his bowels. “God help me now,”

Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart I walk by sedge and brown river rot To where the old lake boats went daily out. All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen In

In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago, A woman sits at her desk to write Me a letter. She holds a photograph Of me up to the light, one taken 17 years ago in

Is it long as a noodle Or fat as an egg? Is it Lumpy like a potato or Ringed like an oak or an Onion and like the onion The same as you go

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

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

Dawn coming in over the fields Of darkness takes me by surprise And I look up from my solitary road Pleased not to be alone, the birds Now choiring from the orange groves Huddling

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

Take this quiet woman, she has been Standing before a polishing wheel For over three hours, and she lacks Twenty minutes before she can take A lunch break. Is she a woman? Consider the

Here in February, the fine Dark branches of the almond Begin to sprout tiny clusters Of leaves, sticky to the touch. Not far off, about the length Of my morning shadow, the grass Is

In borrowed boots which don’t fit And an old olive greatcoat, I hunt the corn-fed rabbit, Game fowl, squirrel, starved bobcat, Anything small. I bring down Young deer wandered from the doe’s Gaze, and

“I’ve been where it hurts.” the Kid He becomes Sierra Kid I passed Slimgullion, Morgan Mine, Camp Seco, and the rotting Lode. Dark walls of sugar pine, And where I left the road I

If you were twenty-seven And had done time for beating Our ex-wife and had No dreams you remembered In the morning, you might Lie on your bed and listen To a mad canary sing

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

The winter sun, golden and tired, Settles on the irregular army Of bottles. Outside the trucks Jostle toward the open road, Outside it’s Saturday afternoon, And young women in black pass by Arm in

April, and the last of the plum blossoms Scatters on the black grass Before dawn. The sycamore, the lime, The struck pine inhale The first pale hints of sky. An iron day, I think,

The sun came up before breakfast, Perfectly round and yellow, and we Dressed in the soft light and shook out Our long blond curls and waited For Maid to brush them flat and place

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