Famous Poets and Poems:  Home  |  Poets  |  Poem of the Month  |  Poet of the Month  |  Top 50 Poems  |  Famous Quotes  |  Famous Love Poems

Back to main page Search for:


FamousPoetsAndPoems.com / Poets / Philip Levine / Poems
Biography
Poems
Quotes
Books
Popular Poets
Langston Hughes

Shel Silverstein

Pablo Neruda

Maya Angelou

Edgar Allan Poe

Robert Frost

Emily Dickinson

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

E. E. Cummings

Walt Whitman

William Wordsworth

Allen Ginsberg

Sylvia Plath

Jack Prelutsky

William Butler Yeats

Thomas Hardy

Robert Hayden

Amy Lowell

Oscar Wilde

Theodore Roethke

All Poets  

See also:

Poets by Nationality

African American Poets

Women Poets

Thematic Poems

Thematic Quotes

Contemporary Poets

Nobel Prize Poets

American Poets

English Poets

Philip Levine Poems
Back to Poems Page
Something Has Fallen by Philip Levine
Something has fallen wordlessly
and holds still on the black driveway.

You find it, like a jewel,
among the empty bottles and cans

where the dogs toppled the garbage.
You pick it up, not sure

if it is stone or wood
or some new plastic made

to replace them both.
When you raise your sunglasses

to see exactly what you have
you see it is only a shadow

that has darkened your fingers,
a black ink or oil,

and your hand suddenly smells
of c1assrooms when the rain

pounded the windows and you
shuddered thinking of the cold

and the walk back to an empty house.
You smell all of your childhood,

the damp bed you struggled from
to dress in half-light and go out

into a world that never tired.
Later, your hand thickened and flat

slid out of a rubber glove,
as you stood, your mask raised,

to light a cigarette and rest
while the acid tanks that were

yours to dean went on bathing
the arteries of broken sinks.

Remember, you were afraid
of the great hissing jugs.

There were stories of burnings,
of flesh shredded to lace.

On other nights men spoke
of rats as big as dogs.

Women spoke of men
who trapped them in corners.

Always there was grease that hid
the faces of worn faucets, grease

that had to be eaten one
finger-print at a time,

there was oil, paint, blood,
your own blood sliding across

your nose and running over
your lips with that bright, certain

taste that was neither earth
or air, and there was air,

the darkest element of all,
falling all night

into the bruised river
you slept beside, falling

into the glass of water
you filled two times for breakfast

and the eyes you turned upward
to see what time it was.

Air that stained everything
with its millions of small deaths,

that turned all five fingers
to grease or black ink or ashes.
View Philip Levine:  Poems | Quotes | Biography | Books

Home   |   About Project   |   Privacy Policy   |   Copyright Notice   |   Links   |   Link to Us   |   Tell a Friend   |   Contact Us
Copyright © 2006 - 2010 Famous Poets And Poems . com. All Rights Reserved.
The Poems and Quotes on this site are the property of their respective authors. All information has been
reproduced here for educational and informational purposes.