WCP:PHILIP LEVINE 1928-2015یلیپ لواین

Philp Levine
 Detroit,1928-2015,Fresno,Ca
U.S. poet laureate 2011-12
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I think I must have lived
Once before not as a man or woman
but as a small quick fox pursued
By ladies and gentlemen on horseback
من فکر می کنم که یکبار دیگر زیسته ام
نه به عنوان مردی یا زنی
بلکه روباه کوچک تیزپایی
که نجیب زادگان زن و مرد بر پشت اسب ها
به تعقیبش بودند
ف.س

Clouds

1
Dawn. First light tearing
at the rough tongues of the zinnias,
at the leaves of the just born.

Today it will rain. On the road
black cars are abandoned, but the clouds
ride above, their wisdom intact.

They are predictions. They never matter.
The jet fighters lift above the flat roofs,
black arrowheads trailing their future.

2
When the night comes small fires go out.
Blood runs to the heart and finds it locked.

Morning is exhaustion, tranquilizers, gasoline,
the screaming of frozen bearings,
the failures of will, the TV talking to itself

The clouds go on eating oil, cigars,
housewives, sighing letters,
the breath of lies. In their great silent pockets
they carry off all our dead.

3
The clouds collect until there's no sky.
A boat slips its moorings and drifts
toward the open sea, turning and turning.

The moon bends to the canal and bathes
her torn lips, and the earth goes on
giving off her angers and sighs

and who knows or cares except these
breathing the first rains,
the last rivers running over iron.

4
You cut an apple in two pieces
and ate them both. In the rain
the door knocked and you dreamed it.
On bad roads the poor walked under cardboard boxes.

The houses are angry because they're watched.
A soldier wants to talk with God
but his mouth fills with lost tags.

The clouds have seen it all, in the dark
they pass over the graves of the forgotten
and they don't cry or whisper.

They should be punished every morning,
they should be bitten and boiled like spoons.

Faramarz Soleimani