Philip Levine Poems

1

We live here because the houses
are clean, the lawns run
...

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.
...

3-foot blue cannisters of nitro
along a conveyor belt, slow fish
speaking the language of silence.
On the roof, I in my respirator
...

from St. Ambrose

He fears the tiger standing in his way.
The tiger takes its time, it smiles and growls.
...

Torn into light, you woke wriggling
on a woman's palm. Halved, quartered,
shredded to the wind, you were the life
that thrilled along the underbelly
...

The first purple wisteria
I recall from boyhood hung
on a wire outside the windows
of the breakfast room next door
...

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
...

Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses
calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs.

Zola, J'accuse
...

Is it long as a noodle
or fat as an egg? Is it
lumpy like a potato or
ringed like an oak or an
...

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
...