Blasting from Heaven

By Philip Levine b. 1928 Philip Levine

The little girl won’t eat her sandwich;

she lifts the bun and looks in, but the grey beef

coated with relish is always there.

Her mother says, “Do it for mother.”

Milk and relish and a hard bun that comes off

like a hat—a kid’s life is a cinch.

And a mother’s life? “What can you do

with a man like that?” she asks the sleeping cook

and then the old Negro who won’t sit.

“He’s been out all night trying to get it.

I hope he gets it. What did he ever do

but get it?” The Negro doesn’t look,

though he looks like he’s been out all night

trying. Everyone’s been out all night trying.

Why else would we be drinking beer

at attention? If she were younger,

or if I were Prince Valiant, I would say that fate

brought me here to quiet the crying,

to sweeten the sandwich of the child,

to waken the cook, to stop the Negro from

bearing witness to the world. The dawn

still hasn’t come, and now we hear

the 8 o’clock whistles blasting from heaven,

and with no morning the day is sold.

Source: New Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1991)

Biography

“A large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland” according to Edward Hirsch in the New York Times Book Review, Philip Levine is one of the elder statesmen of contemporary American poetry. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Levine was born and raised in industrial Detroit. As a young boy in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, he was fascinated by the events of the Spanish Civil War. His heroes were not only . . .

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