Coming Home, Detroit, 1968 by Philip Levine

Coming Home, Detroit, 1968

A winter Tuesday, the city pouring fire,

Ford Rouge sulfurs the sun, Cadillac, Lincoln,

Chevy gray. The fat stacks

of breweries hold their tongues. Rags,

papers, hands, the stems of birches

dirtied with words.

                                        Near the freeway

you stop and wonder what came off,

recall the snowstorm where you lost it all,

the wolverine, the northern bear, the wolf

caught out, ice and steel raining

from the foundries in a shower

of human breath. On sleds in the false sun

the new material rests. One brown child

stares and stares into your frozen eyes

until the lights change and you go

forward to work. The charred faces, the eyes

boarded up, the rubble of innards, the cry

of wet smoke hanging in your throat,

the twisted river stopped at the color of iron.

We burn this city every day.