Philip Levine Short Poems
Famous Short Philip Levine Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Philip Levine. A collection of the all-time best Philip Levine short poems
by
Philip Levine
Los Angeles hums
a little tune --
trucks down
the coast road
for Monday Market
packed with small faces
blinking in the dark.
My mother dreams
by the open window.
On the drainboard
the gray roast humps
untouched, the oven
bangs its iron jaws,
but it's over.
Before her on the table
set for so many
her glass of fire
goes out.
The childish photographs,
the letters and cards
scatter at last.
The dead burn alone
toward dawn.
by
Philip Levine
Iron growing in the dark,
it dreams all night long
and will not work. A flower
that hates God, a child
tearing at itself, this one
closes on nothing.
Friday, late,
Detroit Transmission. If I live
forever, the first clouded light
of dawn will flood me
in the cold streams
north of Pontiac.
It opens and is no longer.
Bud of anger, kinked
tendril of my life, here
in the forged morning
fill with anything -- water,
light, blood -- but fill.
by
Philip Levine
Los Angeles hums
a little tune --
trucks down
the coast road
for Monday Market
packed with small faces
blinking in the dark.
My mother dreams
by the open window.
On the drainboard
the gray roast humps
untouched, the oven
bangs its iron jaws,
but it's over.
Before her on the table
set for so many
her glass of fire
goes out.
The childish photographs,
the letters and cards
scatter at last.
The dead burn alone
toward dawn.
by
Philip Levine
Suddenly the window will open
and Mother will call
it's time to come in
the wall will part
I will enter heaven in muddy shoes
I will come to the table
and answer questions rudely
I am all right leave me
alone. Head in hand I
sit and sit. How can I tell them
about that long
and tangled way.
Here in heaven mothers
knit green scarves
flies buzz
Father dozes by the stove
after six days' labour.
No--surely I can't tell them
that people are at each
other's throats.