Poet Laureate Philip Levine's Sample Poems: The Poet Who Influenced and Mentored Many Central Valley Poets

The New World by Philip Levine

A man roams the streets with a basket
of freestone peaches hollering, "Peaches,
peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale."

My grandfather in his prime could outshout
the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles
along the river. Hamtramck hungered

for yellow freestone peaches, downriver
wakened from a dream of work, Zug Island danced
into the bright day glad to be alive.

Full-figured women in their negligees
streamed into the streets from the dark doorways
to demand in Polish or Armenian

the ripened offerings of this new world.
Josef Prisckulnick out of Dubrovitsa
to Detroit by way of Ellis Island

raised himself regally to his full height
of five feet two and transacted until
the fruit was gone into those eager hands.

Thus would there be a letter sent across
an ocean and a continent, and thus
would Sadie waken to the news of wealth

without limit in the bright and distant land,
and thus bags were packed and she set sail
for America. Some of this is true.

The women were gaunt. All day the kids dug
in the back lots searching for anything.
The place was Russia with another name.

Joe was five feet two. Dubrovitsa burned
to gray ashes the west wind carried off,
then Rovno went, then the Dnieper turned to dust.

We sat around the table telling lies
while the late light filled an empty glass.
Bread, onions, the smell of burning butter,

small white potatoes we shared with no one
because the hour was wrong, the guest was late,
and this was Michigan in 1928.

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Detroit Grease Shop Poem by Philip Levine

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.