Home ⇒ 📌Philip Levine ⇒ Among Children
Among Children
I walk among the rows of bowed heads
The children are sleeping through fourth grade
So as to be ready for what is ahead,
The monumental boredom of junior high
And the rush forward tearing their wings
Loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
Work at the spark plug factory or truck
Bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
To the widows of the suburbs. You can see
Already how their backs have thickened,
How their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
Leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
To sit down among them and read slowly
From The Book of Job until the windows
Pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea
Of industrial scum, her gowns streaming
With light, her foolish words transformed
Into song, I would like to arm each one
With a quiver of arrows so that they might
Rush like wind there where no battle rages
How dear the gift of laughter in the face
Of the 8 hour day, the cold winter mornings
Without coffee and oranges, the long lines
Of mothers in old coats waiting silently
Where the gates have closed. Ten years ago
I went among these same children, just born,
In the bright ward of the Sacred Heart and leaned
Down to hear their breaths delivered that day,
Burning with joy. There was such wonder
In their sleep, such purpose in their eyes
Dosed against autumn, in their damp heads
Blurred with the hair of ponds, and not one
Turned against me or the light, not one
Said, I am sick, I am tired, I will go home,
Not one complained or drifted alone,
Unloved, on the hardest day of their lives.
Eleven years from now they will become
The men and women of Flint or Paradise,
The majors of a minor town, and I
Will be gone into smoke or memory,
So I bow to them here and whisper
All I know, all I will never know.
(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)Related poetry:
- The Cry Of The Children Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The […]...
- The Dream of the Children THE CHILDREN awoke in their dreaming While earth lay dewy and still: They followed the rill in its gleaming To the heart-light of the hill. Its sounds and sights were forsaking The world as they faded in sleep, When they heard a music breaking Out from the heart-light deep. It ran where the rill in […]...
- Good and Bad Children Children, you are very little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try to walk sedately. You must still be bright and quiet, And content with simple diet; And remain, through all bewild’ring, Innocent and honest children. Happy hearts and happy faces, Happy play in grassy places […]...
- Children Come to me, O ye children! For I hear you at your play, And the questions that perplexed me Have vanished quite away. Ye open the eastern windows, That look towards the sun, Where thoughts are singing swallows And the brooks of morning run. In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, In your […]...
- The Children's Hour Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupation, That is know as the children’s hour. I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet. From my study […]...
- The Poor Children Take heed of this small child of earth; He is great; he hath in him God most high. Children before their fleshly birth Are lights alive in the blue sky. In our light bitter world of wrong They come; God gives us them awhile. His speech is in their stammering tongue, And his forgiveness in […]...
- The Children of the Night For those that never know the light, The darkness is a sullen thing; And they, the Children of the Night, Seem lost in Fortune’s winnowing. But some are strong and some are weak, And there’s the story. House and home Are shut from countless hearts that seek World-refuge that will never come. And if there […]...
- Sonnet XXII: With Fools and Children To Folly With fools and children, good discretion bears; Then, honest people, bear with Love and me, Nor older yet, nor wiser made by years, Amongst the rest of fools and children be; Love, still a baby, plays with gauds and toys, And, like a wanton, sports with every feather, And idiots still are running […]...
- The Children's Song Puck of Poock’s Hills Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee Our love and toil in the years to be; When we are grown and take our place As men and women with our race. Father in Heaven who lovest all, Oh, help Thy children when they call; That they may build from age […]...
- Good-Children Street There’s a dear little home in Good-Children street – My heart turneth fondly to-day Where tinkle of tongues and patter of feet Make sweetest of music at play; Where the sunshine of love illumines each face And warms every heart in that old-fashioned place. For dear little children go romping about With dollies and tin […]...
- Among School Children I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way – the children’s eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling […]...
- The Children of Lir Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses; Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool; Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool. Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; For, to wake at daybreak, birds […]...
- Prayer for Children Gracious Lord, our children see, By Thy mercy we are free; But shall these, alas! remain Subjects still of Satan’s reign? Israel’s young ones, when of old Pharaoh threaten’d to withhold, Then Thy messenger said, “No; Let the children also go!” When the angel of the Lord, Drawing forth his dreadful sword, Slew with an […]...
- The Children Dancing Away, sad thoughts, and teasing Perplexities, away! Let other blood go freezing, We will be wise and gay. For here is all heart-easing, An ecstasy at play. The children dancing, dancing, Light upon happy feet, Both eye and heart entrancing Mingle, escape, and meet; Come joyous-eyed and advancing Or floatingly retreat. Now slow, now swifter […]...
- The Return of the Children “They” Traffics and Discoveries Neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs’ dove-winged races Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome, Plucking the splendid robes of the passers-by, and with pitiful! faces Begging what Princes and Powers refused: “Ah, please will you let us go home?” Over the jewelled floor, nigh […]...
- Two Children Give me your hand, oh little one! Like children be we two; Yet I am old, my day is done That barely breaks for you. A baby-basket hard you hold, With in it cherries four: You cherish them as men do gold, And count them o’er. And then you stumble in your walk; The cherries […]...
- We met as Sparks Diverging Flints We met as Sparks Diverging Flints Sent various scattered ways We parted as the Central Flint Were cloven with an Adze Subsisting on the Light We bore Before We felt the Dark A Flint unto this Day perhaps But for that single Spark....
- When the Children Come Home On a lonely selection far out in the West An old woman works all the day without rest, And she croons, as she toils ‘neath the sky’s glassy dome, ‘Sure I’ll keep the ould place till the childer come home.’ She mends all the fences, she grubs, and she ploughs, She drives the old horse […]...
- Song of the Wise Children 1902 When the darkened Fifties dip to the North, And frost and the fog divide the air, And the day is dead at his breaking-forth, Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear! Far to Southward they wheel and glance, The million molten spears of morn The spears of our deliverance That shine on the house […]...
- Against Writing about Children When I think of the many people Who privately despise children, I can’t say I’m completely shocked, Having been one. I was not Exceptional, uncomfortable as that is To admit, and most children are not Exceptional. The particulars of Cruelty, sizes Large and X-Large, Memory gnawing it like A fat dog, are ordinary: Mean Miss […]...
- The Children The children are all crying in their pens And the surf carries their cries away. They are old men who have seen too much, Their mouths are full of dirty clothes, The tongues poverty, tears like puss. The surf pushes their cries back. Listen. They are bewitched. They are writing down their life On the […]...
- Squatter's Children On the unbreathing sides of hills They play, a specklike girl and boy, Alone, but near a specklike house. The Sun’s suspended eye Blinks casually, and then they wade Gigantic waves of light and shade. A dancing yellow spot, a pup, Attends them. Clouds are piling up; A storm piles up behind the house. The […]...
- God Has Pity On Kindergarten Children God has pity on kindergarten children, He pities school children less. But adults he pities not at all. He abandons them, And sometimes they have to crawl on all fours In the scorching sand To reach the dressing station, Streaming with blood. But perhaps He will have pity on those who love truly And take […]...
- The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar 1 The children of the Czar Played with a bouncing ball In the May morning, in the Czar’s garden, Tossing it back and forth. It fell among the flowerbeds Or fled to the north gate. A daylight moon hung up In the Western sky, bald white. Like Papa’s face, said Sister, Hurling the white ball […]...
- To His Two Children In the land of Wu the mulberry leaves are green, And thrice the silkworms have gone to sleep. In East Luh where my family stay, I wonder who is sowing those fields of ours. I cannot be back in time for the spring doings, Yet I can help nothing, traveling on the river. The south […]...
- Dream tryst The breaths of kissing night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven, Throbbing with unheard melody, Shook Lyra all its star-cloud seven. When dusk shrank cold, and light trod shy, And dawn’s grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up to the sky, And mine to Lucidè, There was no change in […]...
- The Sunderland Calamity ‘Twas in the town of Sunderland, and in the year of 1883, That about 200 children were launch’d into eternity While witnessing an entertainment in Victoria Hall, While they, poor little innocents, to God for help did call. The entertainment consisted of conjuring, and the ghost illusion play, Also talking waxworks, and living marionettes, and […]...
- Children of Lir WE woke from our sleep in the bosom where cradled together we lay: The love of the dark hidden Father went with us upon our way. And gay was the breath in our being, and never a sorrow or fear Was on us as, singing together, we flew from the infinite Lir. Through nights lit […]...
- As Children bid the Guest "Good Night" As Children bid the Guest “Good Night” And then reluctant turn My flowers raise their pretty lips Then put their nightgowns on. As children caper when they wake Merry that it is Morn My flowers from a hundred cribs Will peep, and prance again....
- Slumber Songs I Sleep, little eyes That brim with childish tears amid thy play, Be comforted! No grief of night can weigh Against the joys that throng thy coming day. Sleep, little heart! There is no place in Slumberland for tears: Life soon enough will bring its chilling fears And sorrows that will dim the after years. […]...
- Two Children Two children (small), one Four, one Five, Once saw a bee go in a hive, They’d never seen a bee before! So waited there to see some more. And sure enough along they came A dozen bees (and all the same!) Within the hive they buzzed about; Then, one by one, they all flew out. […]...
- Waking In March 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 burning south Of here, going at last as […]...
- Children Selecting Books In A Library With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright. The child’s head, bent to the book-colored shelves, Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering, Moving in blind grace… yet from the mural, Care The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist, Seizes the baby hero by the hair And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children, […]...
- Other Children “Little child of my five senses And of my tenderness.” Let us cradle our loves, We will have good children. Well cared for, We will fear nothing on earth, Happiness, good fortune, prudence, Our loves And this leap from age to age, From the order of a child to that of an old man, Will […]...
- Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day Calmly we walk through this April’s day, Metropolitan poetry here and there, In the park sit pauper and rentier, The screaming children, the motor-car Fugitive about us, running away, Between the worker and the millionaire Number provides all distances, It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now, Many great dears are taken away, What will become of you […]...
- You Can Have It 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 the moon. He will sleep Long after […]...
- Warning to Children Children, if you dare to think Of the greatness, rareness, muchness Fewness of this precious only Endless world in which you say You live, you think of things like this: Blocks of slate enclosing dappled Red and green, enclosing tawny Yellow nets, enclosing white And black acres of dominoes, Where a neat brown paper parcel […]...
- Home, My Little Children, Hear Are Songs For You COME, my little children, here are songs for you; Some are short and some are long, and all, all are new. You must learn to sing them very small and clear, Very true to time and tune and pleasing to the ear. Mark the note that rises, mark the notes that fall, Mark the time […]...
- Dark Night (John of the Cross) In a dark night, when the light burning was the burning of love (fortuitous night, fated, free, ) as I stole from my dark house, dark house that was silent, grave, sleeping, by the staircase that was secret, hidden, safe: disguised by darkness (fortuitous night, fated, free, ) by darkness and […]...
- Our Guardian Angels and Their Children Where a river roars in rapids And doves in maples fret, Where peace has decked the pastures Our guardian angels met. Long they had sought each other In God’s mysterious name, Had climbed the solemn chaos tides Alone, with hope aflame: Amid the demon deeps had wound By many a fearful way. As they beheld […]...