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Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

The Negatives

 On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa, 
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a 
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent 
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville 
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.

AUGUST REIN: 
from a last camp near St. Remy

 I dig in the soft earth all 
 afternoon, spacing the holes 
 a foot or so from the wall. 
 Tonight we eat potatoes, 
 tomorrow rice and carrots. 
 The earth here is like the earth 
 nowhere, ancient with wood rot. 
 How can anything come forth, 

 I wonder; and the days are 
 all alike, if there is more 
 than one day. If there is more 
 of this I will not endure. 
 I have grown so used to being 
 watched I can no longer sleep 
 without my watcher. The thing 
 I fought against, the dark cape, 

 crimsoned with terror that 
 I so hated comforts me now. 
 Thomas is dead; insanity, 
 prison, cowardice, or slow 
 inner capitulation 
 has found us all, and all men 
 turn from us, knowing our pain 
 is not theirs or caused by them.

HENRI BRUETTE: 
from a hospital in Algiers

 Dear Suzanne: this letter will 
 not reach you because I can't 
 write it; I have no pencil, 
 no paper, only the blunt 
 end of my anger. My dear, 
 if I had words how could I 
 report the imperfect failure 
 for which I began to die? 

 I might begin by saying 
 that it was for clarity, 
 though I did not find it in 
 terror: dubiously 
 entered each act, unsure 
 of who I was and what I 
 did, touching my face for fear 
 I was another inside 

 my head I played back pictures 
 of my childhood, of my wife 
 even, for it was in her 
 I found myself beaten, safe, 
 and furthest from the present. 
 It is her face I see now 
 though all I say is meant 
 for you, her face in the slow 

 agony of sexual 
 release. I cannot see you. 
 The dark wall ribbed with spittle 
 on which I play my childhood 
 brings me to this bed, mastered 
 by what I was, betrayed by 
 those I trusted. The one word 
 my mouth must open to is why.

JACK DAUVILLE: 
from a hotel in Tampa, Florida

 From Orleansville we drove 
 south until we reached the hills, 
 then east until 
 the road stopped. I was nervous 
 and couldn't eat. Thomas took 
 over, told us when to think 
 and when to ****. 
 We turned north and reached Blida 
 by first dawn and the City 

 by morning, having dumped our 
 weapons beside an empty 
 road. We were free. 
 We parted, and to this hour 
 I haven't seen them, except 
 in photographs: the black hair 
 and torn features 
 of Thomas Delain captured 
 a moment before his death 

 on the pages of the world, 
 smeared in the act. I tortured 
 myself with their 
 betrayal: alone I hurled 
 them into freedom, inner 
 freedom which I can't find 
 nor ever will 
 until they are dead. In my mind 
 Delain stands against the wall 

 precise in detail, steadied 
 for the betrayal. "La France 
 C'Est Moi," he cried, 
 but the irony was lost. Since 
 I returned to the U.S. 
 nothing goes well. I stay up 
 too late, don't sleep, 
 and am losing weight. Thomas, 
 I say, is dead, but what use 

 telling myself what I won't 
 believe. The hotel quiets 
 early at night, 
 the aged brace themselves for 
 another sleep, and offshore 
 the sea quickens its pace. I 
 am suddenly 
 old, caught in a strange country 
 for which no man would die.

THOMAS DELAIN: 
from a journal found on his person

 At night wakened by the freight 
 trains boring through the suburbs 
 of Lyon, I watched first light 
 corrode the darkness, disturb 
 what little wildlife was left 
 in the alleys: birds moved from 
 branch to branch, and the dogs leapt 
 at the garbage. Winter numbed 
 even the hearts of the young 
 who had only their hearts. We 
 heard the war coming; the long 
 wait was over, and we moved 
 along the crowded roads south 
 not looking for what lost loves 
 fell by the roadsides. To flee 
 at all cost, that was my youth. 

 Here in the African night 
 wakened by what I do not 
 know and shivering in the heat, 
 listen as the men fight 
 with sleep. Loosed from their weapons 
 they cry out, frightened and young, 
 who have never been children. 
 Once merely to be strong, 
 to live, was moral. Within 
 these uniforms we accept 
 the evil we were chosen 
 to deliver, and no act 
 human or benign can free 
 us from ourselves. Wait, sleep, blind 
 soldiers of a blind will, and 
 listen for that old command 
 dreaming of authority.


Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Call It Music

 Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
for New York, that is. The radio playing
"Bird Flight," Parker in his California
tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering
"Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos.
I would guess that outside the recording studio
in Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas,
it was late March, the worst of yesterday's rain
had come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird
could have seen for miles if he'd looked, but what
he saw was so foreign he clenched his eyes,
shook his head, and barked like a dog--just once--
and then Howard McGhee took his arm and assured him
he'd be OK. I know this because Howard told me
years later that he thought Bird could
lie down in the hotel room they shared, sleep
for an hour or more, and waken as himself.
The perfect sunlight angles into my little room
above Willow Street. I listen to my breath
come and go and try to catch its curious taste,
part milk, part iron, part blood, as it passes
from me into the world. This is not me,
this is automatic, this entering and exiting,
my body's essential occupation without which
I am a thing. The whole process has a name,
a word I don't know, an elegant word not
in English or Yiddish or Spanish, a word
that means nothing to me. Howard truly believed
what he said that day when he steered
Parker into a cab and drove the silent miles
beside him while the bright world
unfurled around them: filling stations, stands
of fruits and vegetables, a kiosk selling trinkets
from Mexico and the Philippines. It was all
so actual and Western, it was a new creation
coming into being, like the music of Charlie Parker
someone later called "glad," though that day
I would have said silent, "the silent music
of Charlie Parker." Howard said nothing.
He paid the driver and helped Bird up two flights
to their room, got his boots off, and went out
to let him sleep as the afternoon entered
the history of darkness. I'm not judging
Howard, he did better than I could have
now or then. Then I was 19, working
on the loading docks at Railway Express
coming day by day into the damaged body
of a man while I sang into the filthy air
the Yiddish drinking songs my Zadie taught me
before his breath failed. Now Howard is gone,
eleven long years gone, the sweet voice silenced.
"The subtle bridge between Eldridge and Navarro,"
they later wrote, all that rising passion
a footnote to others. I remember in '85
walking the halls of Cass Tech, the high school
where he taught after his performing days,
when suddenly he took my left hand in his
two hands to tell me it all worked out
for the best. Maybe he'd gotten religion,
maybe he knew how little time was left,
maybe that day he was just worn down
by my questions about Parker. To him Bird
was truly Charlie Parker, a man, a silent note
going out forever on the breath of genius
which now I hear soaring above my own breath
as this bright morning fades into afternoon.
Music, I'll call it music. It's what we need
as the sun staggers behind the low gray clouds
blowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean,
the calm and endless one I've still to cross.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Late Light

 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 
the river, which in turn 
emptied finally into the sea. 
He said this only once 
while I sat on the arm 
of his chair and stared out 
at the banks of gray snow 
melting as the March rain 
streaked past. All the rest 
of that day passed on 
into childhood, into nothing, 
or perhaps some portion hung 
on in a tiny corner of thought. 
Perhaps a clot of cinders 
that peppered the front yard 
clung to a spar of old weed 
or the concrete lip of the curb 
and worked its way back under 
the new growth spring brought 
and is a part of that yard 
still. Perhaps light falling 
on distant houses becomes 
those houses, hunching them 
down at dusk like sheep 
browsing on a far hillside, 
or at daybreak gilds 
the roofs until they groan 
under the new weight, or 
after rain lifts haloes 
of steam from the rinsed, 
white aluminum siding, 
and those houses and all 
they contain live that day 
in the sight of heaven. 

II 

In the blue, winking light 
of the International Institute 
of Social Revolution 
I fell asleep one afternoon 
over a book of memoirs 
of a Spanish priest who'd 
served his own private faith 
in a long forgotten war. 
An Anarchist and a Catholic, 
his remembrances moved 
inexplicably from Castilian 
to Catalan, a language I 
couldn't follow. That dust, 
fine and gray, peculiar 
to libraries, slipped 
between the glossy pages 
and my sight, a slow darkness 
calmed me, and I forgot 
the agony of those men 
I'd come to love, forgot 
the battles lost and won, 
forgot the final trek 
over hopeless mountain roads, 
defeat, surrender, the vows 
to live on. I slept until 
the lights came on and off. 
A girl was prodding my arm, 
for the place was closing. 
A slender Indonesian girl 
in sweater and American jeans, 
her black hair falling 
almost to my eyes, she told 
me in perfect English 
that I could come back, 
and she swept up into a folder 
the yellowing newspaper stories 
and photos spilled out before 
me on the desk, the little 
chronicles of death themselves 
curling and blurring 
into death, and took away 
the book still unfinished 
of a man more confused 
even than I, and switched off 
the light, and left me alone. 

III 

In June of 1975 I wakened 
one late afternoon in Amsterdam 
in a dim corner of a library. 
I had fallen asleep over a book 
and was roused by a young girl 
whose hand lay on my hand. 
I turned my head up and stared 
into her brown eyes, deep 
and gleaming. She was crying. 
For a second I was confused 
and started to speak, to offer 
some comfort or aid, but I 
kept still, for she was crying 
for me, for the knowledge 
that I had wakened to a life 
in which loss was final. 
I closed my eyes a moment. 
When I opened them she'd gone, 
the place was dark. I went 
out into the golden sunlight; 
the cobbled streets gleamed 
as after rain, the street cafes 
crowded and alive. Not 
far off the great bell 
of the Westerkirk tolled 
in the early evening. I thought 
of my oldest son, who years 
before had sailed from here 
into an unknown life in Sweden, 
a life which failed, of how 
he'd gone alone to Copenhagen, 
Bremen, where he'd loaded trains, 
Hamburg, Munich, and finally 
-- sick and weary -- he'd returned 
to us. He slept in a corner 
of the living room for days, 
and woke gaunt and quiet, 
still only seventeen, his face 
in its own shadows. I thought 
of my father on the run 
from an older war, and wondered 
had he passed through Amsterdam, 
had he stood, as I did now, 
gazing up at the pale sky, 
distant and opaque, for the sign 
that never comes. Had he drifted 
in the same winds of doubt 
and change to another continent, 
another life, a family, some 
years of peace, an early death. 
I walked on by myself for miles 
and still the light hung on 
as though the day would 
never end. The gray canals 
darkened slowly, the sky 
above the high, narrow houses 
deepened into blue, and one 
by one the stars began 
their singular voyages.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Last Words

 If the shoe fell from the other foot 
who would hear? If the door 
opened onto a pure darkness 
and it was no dream? If your life 
ended the way a book ends 
with half a blank page and the survivors 
gone off to Africa or madness? 
If my life ended in late spring 
of 1964 while I walked alone 
back down the mountain road? 
I sing an old song to myself. I study 
the way the snow remains, gray 
and damp, in the deep shadows of the firs. 
I wonder if the bike is safe hidden 
just off the highway. Up ahead 
the road, black and winding, falls 
away, and there is the valley where 
I lived half of my life, spectral 
and calm. I sigh with gratitude, 
and then I feel an odd pain rising 
through the back of my head, 
and my eyes go dark. I bend forward 
and place my palms on something rough, 
the black asphalt or a field of stubble, 
and the movement is that of the penitent 
just before he stands to his full height 
with the knowledge of his enormity. 
For that moment which will survive 
the burning of all the small pockets 
of fat and oil that are the soul, 
I am the soul stretching into 
the furthest reaches of my fingers 
and beyond, glowing like ten candles 
in the vault of night for anyone 
who could see, even though it is 
12:40 in the afternoon and I 
have passed from darkness into sunlight 
so fierce the sweat streams down 
into my eyes. I did not rise. 
A wind or a stray animal or a group 
of kids dragged me to the side 
of the road and turned me over 
so that my open eyes could flood heaven. 
My clothes went skittering down 
the road without me, ballooning 
out into any shape, giddy 
with release. My coins, my rings, 
the keys to my house shattered 
like ice and fell into the mountain 
thorns and grasses, little bright points 
that make you think there is magic 
in everything you see. No, it can't 
be, you say, for someone is speaking 
calmly to you in a voice you know. 
Someone alive and confident has put 
each of these words down exactly 
as he wants them on the page. 
You have lived through years 
of denial, of public lies, of death 
falling like snow on any head 
it chooses. You're not a child. 
You know the real thing. I am 
here, as I always was, faithful 
to a need to speak even when all 
you hear is a light current of air 
tickling your ear. Perhaps. 
But what if that dried bundle 
of leaves and dirt were not dirt 
and leaves but the spent wafer 
of a desire to be human? Stop the car, 
turn off the engine, and stand 
in the silence above your life. See 
how the grass mirrors fire, how 
a wind rides up the hillside 
steadily toward you until it surges 
into your ears like breath coming 
and going, released from its bondage 
to blood or speech and denying nothing.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

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
shouting among the trumpets, Hal Ha!
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.


Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

The Rat Of Faith

 A blue jay poses on a stake 
meant to support an apple tree 
newly planted. A strong wind 
on this clear cold morning 
barely ruffles his tail feathers. 
When he turns his attention 
toward me, I face his eyes 
without blinking. A week ago 
my wife called me to come see 
this same bird chase a rat 
into the thick leaves 
of an orange tree. We came as 
close as we could and watched 
the rat dig his way into an orange, 
claws working meticulously. 
Then he feasted, face deep 
into the meal, and afterwards 
washed himself in juice, paws 
scrubbing soberly. Surprised 
by the whiteness of the belly, 
how open it was and vulnerable, 
I suggested I fetch my .22. 
She said, "Do you want to kill him?" 
I didn't. There are oranges 
enough for him, the jays, and us, 
across the fence in the yard 
next door oranges rotting 
on the ground. There is power 
in the name rat, a horror 
that may be private. When I 
was a boy and heir to tales 
of savagery, of sleeping men 
and kids eaten half away before 
they could wake, I came to know 
that horror. I was afraid 
that left alive the animal 
would invade my sleep, grown 
immense now and powerful 
with the need to eat flesh. 
I was wrong. Night after night 
I wake from dreams of a city 
like no other, the bright city 
of beauty I thought I'd lost 
when I lost my faith that one day 
we would come into our lives. 
The wind gusts and calms 
shaking this miniature budding 
apple tree that in three months 
has taken to the hard clay 
of our front yard. In one hop 
the jay turns his back on me, 
dips as though about to drink 
the air itself, and flies.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

For The Country

 THE DREAM

This has nothing to do with war 
or the end of the world. She 
dreams there are gray starlings 
on the winter lawn and the buds 
of next year's oranges alongside 
this year's oranges, and the sun 
is still up, a watery circle 
of fire settling into the sky 
at dinner time, but there's no 
flame racing through the house 
or threatening the bed. When she 
wakens the phone is ringing 
in a distant room, but she 
doesn't go to answer it. No 
one is home with her, and the cars 
passing before the house hiss 
in the rain. "My children!" she 
almost says, but there are no 
longer children at home, there 
are no longer those who would 
turn to her, their faces running 
with tears, and ask her forgiveness.

THE WAR

The Michigan Central Terminal 
the day after victory. Her brother 
home from Europe after years 
of her mother's terror, and he still 
so young but now with the dark 
shadow of a beard, holding her 
tightly among all the others 
calling for their wives or girls. 
That night in the front room 
crowded with family and neighbors -- 
he was first back on the block -- 
he sat cross-legged on the floor 
still in his wool uniform, smoking 
and drinking as he spoke of passing 
high over the dark cities she'd 
only read about. He'd wanted to 
go back again and again. He'd wanted 
to do this for the country, 
for this -- a small house with upstairs 
bedrooms -- so he'd asked to go 
on raid after raid as though 
he hungered to kill or be killed.

THE PRESIDENT

Today on television men 
will enter space and return, 
men she cannot imagine. 
Lost in gigantic paper suits, 
they move like sea creatures. 
A voice will crackle from out 
there where no voices are 
speaking of the great theater 
of conquest, of advancing 
beyond the simple miracles 
of flight, the small ventures 
of birds and beasts. The President 
will answer with words she 
cannot remember having 
spoken ever to anyone.

THE PHONE CALL

She calls Chicago, but no one 
is home. The operator asks 
for another number but still 
no one answers. Together 
they try twenty-one numbers, 
and at each no one is ever home. 
"Can I call Baltimore?" she asks. 
She can, but she knows no one 
in Baltimore, no one in 
St. Louis, Boston, Washington. 
She imagines herself standing 
before the glass wall high 
over Lake Shore Drive, the cars 
below fanning into the city. 
East she can see all the way 
to Gary and the great gray clouds 
of exhaustion rolling over 
the lake where her vision ends. 
This is where her brother lives. 
At such height there's nothing, 
no birds, no growing, no noise. 
She leans her sweating forehead 
against the cold glass, shudders, 
and puts down the receiver.

THE GARDEN

Wherever she turns her garden 
is alive and growing. The thin 
spears of wild asparagus, shaft 
of tulip and flag, green stain 
of berry buds along the vines, 
even in the eaten leaf of 
pepper plants and clipped stalk 
of snap bean. Mid-afternoon 
and already the grass is dry 
under the low sun. Bluejay 
and dark capped juncos hidden 
in dense foliage waiting 
the sun's early fall, when she 
returns alone to hear them 
call and call back, and finally 
in the long shadows settle 
down to rest and to silence 
in the sudden rising chill.

THE GAME

Two boys are playing ball 
in the backyard, throwing it 
back and forth in the afternoon's 
bright sunshine as a black mongrel 
big as a shepherd races 
from one to the other. She 
hides behind the heavy drapes 
in her dining room and listens, 
but they're too far. Who are 
they? They move about her yard 
as though it were theirs. Are they 
the sons of her sons? They've 
taken off their shirts, and she 
sees they're not boys at all -- 
a dark smudge of hair rises 
along the belly of one --, and now 
they have the dog down thrashing 
on his back, snarling and flashing 
his teeth, and they're laughing.

AFTER DINNER

She's eaten dinner talking 
back to the television, she's 
had coffee and brandy, done 
the dishes and drifted into 
and out of sleep over a book 
she found beside the couch. It's 
time for bed, but she goes 
instead to the front door, unlocks 
it, and steps onto the porch. 
Behind her she can hear only 
the silence of the house. The lights 
throw her shadow down the stairs 
and onto the lawn, and she walks 
carefully to meet it. Now she's 
standing in the huge, whispering 
arena of night, hearing her 
own breath tearing out of her 
like the cries of an animal. 
She could keep going into 
whatever the darkness brings, 
she could find a presence there 
her shaking hands could hold 
instead of each other.

SLEEP

A dark sister lies beside her 
all night, whispering 
that it's not a dream, that fire 
has entered the spaces between 
one face and another. 
There will be no wakening. 
When she wakens, she can't 
catch her own breath, so she yells 
for help. It comes in the form 
of sleep. They whisper 
back and forth, using new words 
that have no meaning 
to anyone. The aspen shreds 
itself against her window. 
The oranges she saw that day 
in her yard explode 
in circles of oil, the few stars 
quiet and darken. They go on, 
two little girls up long past 
their hour, playing in bed.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Gin

 The first time I drank gin
I thought it must be hair tonic.
My brother swiped the bottle
from a guy whose father owned
a drug store that sold booze
in those ancient, honorable days
when we acknowledged the stuff
was a drug. Three of us passed
the bottle around, each tasting
with disbelief. People paid
for this? People had to have
it, the way we had to have
the women we never got near.
(Actually they were girls, but
never mind, the important fact
was their impenetrability. )
Leo, the third foolish partner,
suggested my brother should have
swiped Canadian whiskey or brandy,
but Eddie defended his choice
on the grounds of the expressions
"gin house" and "gin lane," both
of which indicated the preeminence
of gin in the world of drinking,
a world we were entering without
understanding how difficult
exit might be. Maybe the bliss
that came with drinking came
only after a certain period
of apprenticeship. Eddie likened
it to the holy man's self-flagellation
to experience the fullness of faith.
(He was very well read for a kid
of fourteen in the public schools. )
So we dug in and passed the bottle
around a second time and then a third,
in the silence each of us expecting
some transformation. "You get used
to it," Leo said. "You don't
like it but you get used to it."
I know now that brain cells
were dying for no earthly purpose,
that three boys were becoming
increasingly despiritualized
even as they took into themselves
these spirits, but I thought then
I was at last sharing the world
with the movie stars, that before
long I would be shaving because
I needed to, that hair would
sprout across the flat prairie
of my chest and plunge even
to my groin, that first girls
and then women would be drawn
to my qualities. Amazingly, later
some of this took place, but
first the bottle had to be
emptied, and then the three boys
had to empty themselves of all
they had so painfully taken in
and by means even more painful
as they bowed by turns over
the eye of the toilet bowl
to discharge their shame. Ahead
lay cigarettes, the futility
of guaranteed programs of
exercise, the elaborate lies
of conquest no one believed,
forms of sexual torture and
rejection undreamed of. Ahead
lay our fifteenth birthdays,
acne, deodorants, crabs, salves,
butch haircuts, draft registration,
the military and political victories
of Dwight Eisenhower, who brought us
Richard Nixon with wife and dog.
Any wonder we tried gin.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

The Return

 All afternoon my father drove the country roads
between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for
I never learned, no doubt because he never knew himself,
though he would grab any unfamiliar side road
and follow where it led past fields of tall sweet corn
in August or in winter those of frozen sheaves.
Often he'd leave the Terraplane beside the highway
to enter the stunned silence of mid-September,
his eyes cast down for a sign, the only music
his own breath or the wind tracking slowly through
the stalks or riding above the barren ground. Later
he'd come home, his dress shoes coated with dust or mud,
his long black overcoat stained or tattered
at the hem, sit wordless in his favorite chair,
his necktie loosened, and stare at nothing. At first
my brothers and I tried conversation, questions
only he could answer: Why had he gone to war?
Where did he learn Arabic? Where was his father?
I remember none of this. I read it all later,
years later as an old man, a grandfather myself,
in a journal he left my mother with little drawings
of ruined barns and telephone poles, receding
toward a future he never lived, aphorisms
from Montaigne, Juvenal, Voltaire, and perhaps a few
of his own: "He who looks for answers finds questions."
Three times he wrote, "I was meant to be someone else,"
and went on to describe the perfumes of the damp fields.
"It all starts with seeds," and a pencil drawing
of young apple trees he saw somewhere or else dreamed.

I inherited the book when I was almost seventy
and with it the need to return to who we were.
In the Detroit airport I rented a Taurus;
the woman at the counter was bored or crazy:
Did I want company? she asked; she knew every road
from here to Chicago. She had a slight accent,
Dutch or German, long black hair, and one frozen eye.
I considered but decided to go alone,
determined to find what he had never found.
Slowly the autumn morning warmed, flocks of starlings
rose above the vacant fields and blotted out the sun.
I drove on until I found the grove of apple trees
heavy with fruit, and left the car, the motor running,
beside a sagging fence, and entered his life
on my own for maybe the first time. A crow welcomed
me home, the sun rode above, austere and silent,
the early afternoon was cloudless, perfect.
When the crow dragged itself off to another world,
the shade deepened slowly in pools that darkened around
the trees; for a moment everything in sight stopped.
The wind hummed in my good ear, not words exactly,
not nonsense either, nor what I spoke to myself,
just the language creation once wakened to.
I took off my hat, a mistake in the presence
of my father's God, wiped my brow with what I had,
the back of my hand, and marveled at what was here:
nothing at all except the stubbornness of things.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

The Mercy

 The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island 
Eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." 
She remembers trying to eat a banana 
without first peeling it and seeing her first orange
in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman 
who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her 
with a red bandana and taught her the word,
"orange," saying it patiently over and over. 
A long autumn voyage, the days darkening 
with the black waters calming as night came on, 
then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space
without limit rushing off to the corners 
of creation. She prayed in Russian and Yiddish 
to find her family in New York, prayers 
unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored 
by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness 
before she woke, that kept "The Mercy" afloat 
while smallpox raged among the passengers 
and crew until the dead were buried at sea 
with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom.
"The Mercy," I read on the yellowing pages of a book 
I located in a windowless room of the library 
on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days 
offshore in quarantine before the passengers
disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships 
arrived, "Tancred" out of Glasgow, "The Neptune"
registered as Danish, "Umberto IV," 
the list goes on for pages, November gives 
way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore. 
Italian miners from Piemonte dig 
under towns in western Pennsylvania 
only to rediscover the same nightmare 
they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels 
all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. 
She learns that mercy is something you can eat 
again and again while the juice spills over 
your chin, you can wipe it away with the back 
of your hands and you can never get enough.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry