“The pines make a music like no other, rising and falling like a distant surf at night that calms the darkness before first light. "Soughing" we call it, from Old English, no less. How weightless words are when nothing will do.”
—Gospel by Philip Levine“Fact is, silence is the perfect water: unlike rain it falls from no clouds to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes, to give heart to the thin blades of grass fighting through the concrete for even air dirtied by our endless stream of words.”
—Philip Levine, He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do (thanks, alittleoffcolour)“When you sit down to write a poem, you really don't know where you're going. If you know where you're going, the poem stinks, you probably already wrote it, and you're imitating yourself. You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn't expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, 'That is truly what I felt.' That is truly what I saw.”
—Philip Levine
“Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme, they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, the glass of water, the absence of light gathering in the shadows of picture frames, they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”
—Philip Levine, “The Simple Truth”Any Night
Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine,
the yellowing ash, all the trees
are gone, and I was older than
all of them. I am older than the moon,
than the stars that fill my plate,
than the unseen planets that huddle
together here at the end of a year
no one wanted. A year more than a year,
in which the sparrows learned
to fly backwards into eternity.
Their brothers and sisters saw this
and refuse to build nests. Before
the week is over they will all
have gone, and the chorus of love
that filled my yard and spilled
into my kitchen each evening
will be gone. I will have to learn
to sing in the voices of pure joy
and pure pain. I will have to forget
my name, my childhood, the years
under the cold dominion of the clock
so that this voice, torn and cracked,
can reach the low hills that shielded
the orange trees once. I will stand
on the back porch as the cold
drifts in, and sing, not for joy,
not for love, not even to be heard.
I will sing so that the darkness
can take hold and whatever
is left, the fallen fruit, the last
leaf, the puzzled squirrel, the child
far from home, lost, will believe
this could be any night. That boy,
walking alone, thinking of nothing
or reciting his favorite names
to the moon and stars, let him
find the home he left this morning,
let him hear a prayer out
of the raging mouth of the wind.
Let him repeat that prayer,
the prayer that night follows day,
that life follows death, that in time
we find our lives. Don’t let him see
all that has gone. Let him love
the darkness. Look, he’s running
and singing too. He could be happy.
— Philip Levine
“The day will become something it’s never been before, something for which I have no name.”
—Philip Levine, from “How to Get There”“You have to remember this isn't your land. It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside and thought was yours. Remember the small boats that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men who carved a living from it only to find themselves carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home, so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust, wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.”
—Philip Levine, from “Our Valley”
“...How weightless words are when nothing will do.”
—Philip Levine, from “Gospel”Detroit Grease Shop Poem
Four bright steel crosses,
universal joints, plucked
out of the burlap sack —
“the heart of the drive train,”
the book says. Stars
on Lemon’s wooden palm,
stars that must be capped,
rolled, and anointed,
that have their orders
and their commands as he
has his.
Under the blue
hesitant light another day
at Automotive
in the city of dreams.
We’re all here to count
and be counted, Lemon,
Rosie, Eugene, Luis,
and me, too young to know
this is for keeps, pinning
on my apron, rolling up
my sleeves.
The roof leaks
from yesterday’s rain,
the waters gather above us
waiting for one mistake.
When a drop falls on Lemon’s
corded arm, he looks at it
as though it were something
rare or mysterious
like a drop of water or
a single lucid meteor
fallen slowly from
nowhere and burning on
his skin like a tear.
- Philip Levine
*a classic poem about Detroit by Detroit poet and former poet laureate Philip Levine (interview here). On the show today, Charlie LeDuff talks about his book Detroit: An American Autopsy.
