Philip Levine Poems (94 Poems)
Late Light (Philip Levine Poems)
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 … Continue reading
You Can Have It (Philip Levine Poems)
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 … Continue reading
I Won, You Lost (Philip Levine Poems)
The last of day gathers in the yellow parlor and drifts like fine dust across the face of the gilt-framed mirror I ofien prayed to. An old man’s room without him, a room I came back to again and again … Continue reading
A Woman Waking (Philip Levine Poems)
She wakens early remembering her father rising in the dark lighting the stove with a match scraped on the floor. Then measuring water for coffee, and later the smell coming through. She would hear him drying spoons, dropping them one … Continue reading
They Feed They Lion (Philip Levine Poems)
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 … Continue reading
Night Words (Philip Levine Poems)
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 traffic light on Houston. He sleeps … Continue reading
What Work Is (Philip Levine Poems)
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. … Continue reading
Among Children (Philip Levine Poems)
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 … Continue reading
At Bessemer (Philip Levine Poems)
19 years old and going nowhere, I got a ride to Bessemer and walked the night road toward Birmingham passing dark groups of men cursing the end of a week like every week. Out of town I found a small … Continue reading
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives (Philip Levine Poems)
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 the blade that opens the hole … Continue reading
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