Home ⇒ 📌Philip Levine ⇒ The Whole Soul
The Whole Soul
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 toward
The core? That would be
Suitable, for is it not
The human core and the rest
Meant either to keep it
Warm or cold depending
On the season or just who
You’re talking to, the rest
A means of getting it from
One place to another, for it
Must go on two legs down
The stairs and out the front
Door, it must greet the sun
With a sigh of pleasure as
It stands on the front porch
Considering the day’s agenda.
Whether to go straight ahead
Passing through the ranch houses
Of the rich, living rooms
Panelled with a veneer of fake
Philippine mahogany and bedrooms
With ermined floors and tangled
Seas of silk sheets, through
Adobe walls and secret gardens
Of sweet corn and marijuana
Until it crosses several sets
Of tracks, four freeways, and
A mountain range and faces
A great ocean each drop of
Which is known and like
No other, each with its own
Particular tang, one suitable
To bring forth the flavor
Of a noodle, still another
When dried on an open palm,
Sparkling and tiny, just right
For a bite of ripe tomato
Or to incite a heavy tongue
That dragged across a brow
Could utter the awful words,
“Oh, my love!” and mean them.
The more one considers
The more puzzling become
These shapes. I stare out
At the Pacific and wonder
Noodle, onion, lump, double
Yolked egg on two legs,
A star as perfect as salt
And my own shape a compound
Of so many lengths, lumps,
And flat palms. And while I’m
Here at the shore I bow to
Take a few handfuls of water
Which run between my fingers,
Those poor noodles good for
Holding nothing for long, and
I speak in a tongue hungering
For salt and water without salt,
I give a shape to the air going
Out and the air coming in,
And the sea winds scatter it
Like so many burning crystals
Settling on the evening ocean.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)Related poetry:
- Ode To Salt This salt In the saltcellar I once saw in the salt mines. I know You won’t Believe me, But It sings, Salt sings, the skin Of the salt mines Sings With a mouth smothered By the earth. I shivered in those solitudes When I heard The voice of The salt In the desert. Near Antofagasta […]...
- Ode To Conger Chowder In the storm-tossed Chilean Sea Lives the rosy conger, Giant eel Of snowy flesh. And in Chilean Stewpots, Along the coast, Was born the chowder, Thick and succulent, A boon to man. You bring the conger, skinned, To the kitchen (its mottled skin slips off Like a glove, Leaving the Grape of the sea Exposed […]...
- A Solemn thing within the Soul A Solemn thing within the Soul To feel itself get ripe And golden hang while farther up The Maker’s Ladders stop And in the Orchard far below You hear a Being drop A Wonderful to feel the Sun Still toiling at the Cheek You thought was finished Cool of eye, and critical of Work He […]...
- A Dialogue Of Self And Soul My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, “Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul My […]...
- Thing Language This ocean, humiliating in its disguises Tougher than anything. No one listens to poetry. The ocean Does not mean to be listened to. A drop Or crash of water. It means Nothing. It Is bread and butter Pepper and salt. The death That young men hope for. Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless […]...
- Magellanic Penguin Neither clown nor child nor black Nor white but verticle And a questioning innocence Dressed in night and snow: The mother smiles at the sailor, The fisherman at the astronaunt, But the child child does not smile When he looks at the bird child, And from the disorderly ocean The immaculate passenger Emerges in snowy […]...
- Ode To The Onion Onion, Luminous flask, Your beauty formed Petal by petal, Crystal scales expanded you And in the secrecy of the dark earth Your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth The miracle Happened And when your clumsy Green stem appeared, And your leaves were born Like swords In the garden, The earth heaped up her […]...
- My Soul accused me And I quailed My Soul accused me And I quailed As Tongue of Diamond had reviled All else accused me and I smiled My Soul that Morning was My friend Her favor is the best Disdain Toward Artifice of Time or Men But Her Disdain ’twere lighter bear A finger of Enamelled Fire...
- As You Go Through Life Don’t look for the flaws as you go through life; And even when you find them, It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind And look for the virtue behind them. For the cloudiest night has a hint of light Somewhere in its shadows hiding; It is better by far to hunt for a […]...
- The Harbour This harbour was made by art and force. And called Kingstown and afterwards Dun Laoghaire. And holds the sea behind its barrier Less than five miles from my house. Lord be with us say the makers of a nation. Lord look down say the builders of a harbour. They came and cut a shape out […]...
- Last night my soul cried O exalted sphere of Heaven Last night my soul cried, “O exalted sphere of Heaven, you hang indeed inverted, with flames in your belly. “Without sin and crime, eternally revolving upon your body in its complaining is the indigo of mourning; “Now happy, now unhappy, like Abraham in the fire; at once king and beggar like Ebrahim-e Adham. “In your […]...
- Dream Land Where sunless rivers weep Their waves into the deep, She sleeps a charmed sleep: Awake her not. Led by a single star, She came from very far To seek where shadows are Her pleasant lot. She left the rosy morn, She left the fields of corn, For twilight cold and lorn And water springs. Through […]...
- The Soul has Bandaged moments The Soul has Bandaged moments When too appalled to stir She feels some ghastly Fright come up And stop to look at her Salute her with long fingers Caress her freezing hair Sip, Goblin, from the very lips The Lover hovered o’er Unworthy, that a thought so mean Accost a Theme so fair The soul […]...
- Sandpipers Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. Homes for sandpipers-the script of their feet is on the sea shingles-they write in the morning, it is gone at noon-they write at noon, it is gone at night. Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpiper’s wire legs and […]...
- Valentine Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light Like the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears Like a lover. It will make your reflection A wobbling photo of grief. I am trying to be […]...
- Be Still, My Soul, Be Still Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong. Think rather, call to thought, if now you grieve a little, The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry […]...
- Legs rivers and age with landbound legs a wish For the easy flow of a river – not The clambering up crags to seek More favour from the sun (or long-haired moon) harped for Since those sparks of who am i First clicked through consciousness How the river sidles round Rocks blocking the painful straight Seems to brush aside […]...
- The Consecrating Mother I stand before the sea And it rolls and rolls in its green blood Saying, “Do not give up one god For I have a handful.” The trade winds blew In their twelve-fingered reversal And I simply stood on the beach While the ocean made a cross of salt And hung up its drowned And […]...
- The Simple Truth I bought a dollar and a half’s worth of small red potatoes, Took them home, boiled them in their jackets And ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt. Then I walked through the dried fields On the edge of town. In middle June the light Hung on in the dark furrows at […]...
- Adelaide Crapsey AMONG the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July, I read your heart in a book. And your mouth of blue pansy-I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered. And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held […]...
- A Dialogue Between the Resolved Soul, And Created Pleasure Courage my Soul, now learn to wield The weight of thine immortal Shield. Close on thy Head thy Helmet bright. Ballance thy Sword against the Fight. See where an Army, strong as fair, With silken Banners spreads the air. Now, if thou bee’st that thing Divine, In this day’s Combat let it shine: And shew […]...
- No Coward Soul Is Mine No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life-that in me has rest, As I-undying Life-have power in Thee! Vain are the thousand creeds That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain; […]...
- King of the River If the water were clear enough, If the water were still, But the water is not clear, The water is not still, You would see yourself, Slipped out of your skin, Nosing upstream, Slapping, thrashing, Tumbling Over the rocks Till you paint them With your belly’s blood: Finned Ego, Yard of muscle that coils, Uncoils. […]...
- To a Fish You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced, Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea, Gulping salt-water everlastingly, Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced, And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste; And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be, Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry, Legless, unloving, infamously chaste: O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring […]...
- Inland People that build their houses inland, People that buy a plot of ground Shaped like a house, and build a house there, Far from the sea-board, far from the sound Of water sucking the hollow ledges, Tons of water striking the shore,- What do they long for, as I long for One salt smell of […]...
- The History Of One Tough Motherfucker he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and Terrorized A white cross-eyed tailless cat I took him in and fed him and he stayed Grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway And ran him over I took what was left to a vet who said,”not much Chance…give him […]...
- A Dialogue Between The Soul And Body Soul O Who shall, from this Dungeon, raise A Soul inslav’d so many wayes? With bolts of Bones, that fetter’d stands In Feet ; and manacled in Hands. Here blinded with an Eye ; and there Deaf with the drumming of an Ear. A Soul hung up, as ’twere, in Chains Of Nerves, and Arteries, […]...
- Dream Song 86: Op. posth. no. 9 The conclusion is growing. . . I feel sure, my lord, This august court will entertain the plea Not Guilty by reason of death. I can say no more except that for the record I add that all the crimes since all the times he Died will be due to the breath Of unknown others, […]...
- Told 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 green pod swelling The […]...
- Thirst My spirit wails for water, water now! My tongue is aching dry, my throat is hot For water, fresh rain shaken from a bough, Or dawn dews heavy in some leafy spot. My hungry body’s burning for a swim In sunlit water where the air is cool, As in Trout Valley where upon a limb […]...
- The Cockney Soul From Woolwich and Brentford and Stamford Hill, from Richmond into the Strand, Oh, the Cockney soul is a silent soul — as it is in every land! But out on the sand with a broken band it’s sarcasm spurs them through; And, with never a laugh, in a gale and a half, ’tis the Cockney […]...
- Right in Front of the Army “Where ‘ave you been this week or more, ‘Aven’t seen you about the war’? Thought perhaps you was at the rear Guarding the waggons.” “What, us? No fear! Where have we been? Why, bless my heart, Where have we been since the bloomin’ start? Right in the front of the army, Battling day and night! […]...
- The Lost Ingredient Almost yesterday, those gentle ladies stole To their baths in Atlantic Cuty, for the lost Rites of the first sea of the first salt Running from a faucet. I have heard they sat For hours in briny tubs, patting hotel towels Sweetly over shivered skin, smelling the stale Harbor of a lost ocean, praying at […]...
- The Terrible Abstractions The naked hunter’s fist, bunched round his spear, Was tight and wet inside with sweat of fear; He heard behind him what the hunted hear. The silence in the undergrowth crept near; Its mischief tickled in his nervous ear And he became the prey, the quivering deer. The naked hunter feared the threat he knew: […]...
- Languages THERE are no handles upon a language Whereby men take hold of it And mark it with signs for its remembrance. It is a river, this language, Once in a thousand years Breaking a new course Changing its way to the ocean. It is mountain effluvia Moving to valleys And from nation to nation Crossing […]...
- Poetics I look for the way Things will turn Out spiralling from a center, The shape Things will take to come forth in So that the birch tree white Touched black at branches Will stand out Wind-glittering Totally its apparent self: I look for the forms Things want to come as From what black wells of […]...
- Cockspur Bush I am lived. I am died. I was two-leafed three times, and grazed, But then I was stemmed and multiplied, Sharp-thorned and caned, nested and raised, Earth-salt by sun-sugar. I was innerly sung By thrushes who need fear no eyed skin thing. Finched, ant-run, flowered, I am given the years In now fewer berries, now […]...
- A Paumanok Picture TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, Ten fishermen waiting-they discover a thick school of mossbonkers-they drop the join’d seine-ends in the water, The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course to the beach, enclosing the mossbonkers, The net is drawn in by a windlass by those who stop […]...
- Our Eyes Our eyes are limpid drops of water. In each drop exists a tiny sign of our genius Which has given life to cold iron. Our eyes are limpid drops of water Merged absolutely in the Ocean That you could hardly recognize the drop in a block of ice in a boiling pan. The masterpiece of […]...
- The Walking Man of Rodin LEGS hold a torso away from the earth. And a regular high poem of legs is here. Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors. You make us […]...