The long lines of diesels <br />groan toward evening <br />carrying off the breath <br />of the living. <br />The face of your house <br />is black, <br />it is your face, black <br />and fire bombed <br />in the first street wars, <br />a black tooth planted in the earth <br />of Michigan <br />and bearing nothing, <br />and the earth is black, <br />sick on used oils. <br /> <br />Did you look for me in that house <br />behind the sofa <br />where I had to be? <br />in the basement where the shirts <br />yellowed on hangers? <br />in the bedroom <br />where a woman lay her face <br />on a locked chest? <br />I waited <br />at windows the rain streaked <br />and no one told me. <br /> <br />I found you later <br />face torn <br />from The History of Siege, <br />eyes turned to a public wall <br />and gone <br />before I turned back, mouth <br />in mine and gone. <br />I found you whole <br />toward the autumn of my 43rd year <br />in this chair beside <br />a masonjar of dried zinnias <br />and I turned away. <br /> <br />I find you <br />in these tears, few, <br />useless and here at last. <br /> <br />Don't come back.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/father-3/
