Salts and Oils

In Havana in 1948 I ate fried dog 
believing it was Peking duck. Later, 
in Tampa I bunked with an insane sailor 
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts. 
In the same room were twins, oilers 
from Toledo, who argued for hours 
each night whose turn it was 
to get breakfast and should he turn 
the eggs or not. On the way north 
I lived for three days on warm water 
in a DC-6 with a burned out radio 
on the runway at Athens, Georgia. We sang 
a song, "Georgia's Big Behind," and prayed 
for WWIII and complete, unconditional surrender. 
Napping in an open field near Newport News, 
I chewed on grass while the shadows of September 
lengthened; in the distance a man hammered 
on the roof of a hangar and groaned how he 
was out of luck and vittles. Bummed a ride 
in from Mitchell Field and had beet borscht 
and white bread at 34th and 8th Avenue. 
I threw up in the alley behind the YMCA 
and slept until they turned me out. 
I walked the bridge to Brooklyn 
while the East River browned below. 
A mile from Ebbetts Field, from all 
that history, I found Murray, my papa's 
buddy, in his greasy truck shop, polishing 
replacement parts. Short, unshaven, puffed, 
he strutted the filthy aisles, 
a tiny Ghengis Khan. He sent out for soup 
and sandwiches. The world turned on barley, 
pickled meats, yellow mustard, kasha, 
rye breads. It rained in October, rained 
so hard I couldn't walk and smoke, so I 
chewed pepsin chewing gum. The rain 
spoiled Armistice Day in Lancaster, Pa. 
The open cars overflowed, girls cried, 
the tubas and trombones went dumb, 
the floral displays shredded, the gutters 
clogged with petals. Afterwards had ham 
on buttered whole-wheat bread, ham 
and butter for the first time 
on the same day in Zanesville with snow 
forecast, snow, high winds, closed roads, 
solid darkness before 5 p.m. These were not 
the labors of Hercules, these were not 
of meat or moment to anyone but me 
or destined for story or to learn from 
or to make me fit to take the hand 
of a toad or a toad princess or to stand 
in line for food stamps. One quiet morning 
at the end of my thirteenth year a little bird 
with a dark head and tattered tail feathers 
had come to the bedroom window and commanded 
me to pass through the winding miles 
of narrow dark corridors and passageways 
of my growing body the filth and glory 
of the palatable world. Since then I've 
been going out and coming back 
the way a swallow does with unerring grace 
and foreknowledge because all of this 
was prophesied in the final, unread book 
of the Midrash and because I have to 
grow up and because it pleases me.

- Philip Levine, from “Sweet Will”