A Sleepless Night (Philip Levine Poems)
April, and the last of the plum blossoms scatters on the black grass before dawn. The sycamore, the lime, the ...
Philip Levine Poems (94 Poems)
The End Of Your Life (Philip Levine Poems)
First light. This misted field is the world, that man slipping the greased bolt back and forth, that man tunneled ...
The Rains (Philip Levine Poems)
The river rises and the rains keep coming. My Papa says it can't flood for the water can run away ...
Fist (Philip Levine Poems)
Iron growing in the dark, it dreams all night long and will not work. A flower that hates God, a ...
Magpiety (Philip Levine Poems)
You pull over to the shoulder of the two-lane road and sit for a moment wondering where you were going ...
Montjuich (Philip Levine Poems)
"Hill of Jews," says one, named for a cemetery long gone."Hill of Jove," says another, and maybe Jove stalked here ...
An Ending (Philip Levine Poems)
Early March. The cold beach deserted. My kids home in a bare house, bundled up and listening to rock music ...
The Present (Philip Levine Poems)
The day comes slowly in the railyard behind the ice factory. It broods on one cinder after another until each ...
Once (Philip Levine Poems)
Hungry and cold, I stood in a doorway on Delancey Street in 1946 as the rain came down. The worst ...
Black Stone On Top Of Nothing (Philip Levine Poems)
Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black ribbon around the apartment building covering the front door. He ...
The Turning (Philip Levine Poems)
Unknown faces in the street And winter coming on. I Stand in the last moments of The city, no more ...
Told (Philip Levine Poems)
The air lay soffly on the green fur of the almond, it was April and I said, I begin again ...
The Simple Truth (Philip Levine Poems)
I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes, took them home, boiled them in their jackets ...
Night Thoughts Over A Sick Child (Philip Levine Poems)
Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep, I keep night watch. Looking for signs to quiet fear, I creep closer to ...
Smoke (Philip Levine Poems)
Can you imagine the air filled with smoke? It was. The city was vanishing before noon or was it earlier ...
How Much Earth (Philip Levine Poems)
Torn into light, you woke wriggling on a woman's palm. Halved, quartered, shredded to the wind, you were the life ...
Salts And Oils (Philip Levine Poems)
In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog believing it was Peking duck. Later, in Tampa I bunked with an ...
The Distant Winter (Philip Levine Poems)
from an officer's diary during the last war I The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids. "Stephan! Stephan!" The ...
Waking In March (Philip Levine Poems)
Last night, again, I dreamed my children were back at home, small boys huddled in their separate beds, and I ...
The Mercy (Philip Levine Poems)
The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island Eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." She remembers trying to ...
House Of Silence (Philip Levine Poems)
The winter sun, golden and tired, settles on the irregular army of bottles. Outside the trucks jostle toward the open ...
The Rat Of Faith (Philip Levine Poems)
A blue jay poses on a stake meant to support an apple tree newly planted. A strong wind on this ...
Holy Day (Philip Levine Poems)
Los Angeles hums a little tune -- trucks down the coast road for Monday Market packed with small faces blinking ...
Mad Day In March (Philip Levine Poems)
Beaten like an old hound Whimpering by the stove, I complicate the pain That smarts with promised love. The oilstove ...
Father (Philip Levine Poems)
The long lines of diesels groan toward evening carrying off the breath of the living. The face of your house ...
Bitterness (Philip Levine Poems)
Here in February, the fine dark branches of the almond begin to sprout tiny clusters of leaves, sticky to the ...
Ode For Mrs. William Settle (Philip Levine Poems)
In Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago, a woman sits at her desk to write me a letter. She holds ...
Where We Live Now (Philip Levine Poems)
1 We live here because the houses are clean, the lawns run right to the street and the streets run ...
Small Game (Philip Levine Poems)
In borrowed boots which don't fit and an old olive greatcoat, I hunt the corn-fed rabbit, game fowl, squirrel, starved ...
On The Murder Of Lieutenant Jose Del Castillo By The Falangist Bravo Martinez, July 12, 1936 (Philip Levine Poems)
When the Lieutenant of the Guardia de Asalto heard the automatic go off, he turned and took the second shot ...