Denise Levertov Quotes

It is said he made his earth-journey, and lost what he sought. It is said they felled him and cut up his limbs for firewood. And it is said his head still sang and was swept out to sea singing.

all of us know he means we mustn't, any of us, lose touch with the source, pretend it's not there, cover over the mineshaft of passion

You have come to the shore. There are no instructions.

Looking, Walking, Being

I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
Sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.
The eyes
Dig and burrow in the world.
They touch
Fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
Not only
Visible present, solid and shadow
That looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
Of echo and interruption?
That’s
A way of breathing,

breathing to sustain
Looking,
Walking and looking,
Through the world,
In it.

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.

I do not believe that a violent imitation of the horrors of our times is the concern of poetry. Horrors are taken for granted. Disorder is ordinary. People in general take more and more 'in their stride' — hides grow thicker. I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist. Insofar as poetry has a social function, it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber...

"The yellow moon dreamily
tipping buttons of light
down among the leaves. Marimba,
marimba - from beyond the
black street.
Somebody dancing,
somebody
getting the hell
outta here. Shadows of cats
weave round the treetrunks,
the exposed knotty roots.

("Scenes from the Life of the Peppertrees")"

Two girls discover the secret of life
in a sudden line of poetry.

Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.
And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,
quiet steady sound. Before it grew too dark
watched the blue iris leaning under the rain,
the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.
A voice. Almost recalled. There have been times
the gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?
A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of it
too distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,
no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebush
pierces the table’s reflection, raindrops gazing from it.
There have been hands laid on my shoulders.
What has been said to me,
how has my life replied?
The rain, the rain...

What I invaded has invaded me.

There's in my mind a...
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.

and nothing was burning, nothing but I,

To speak of sorrow
works upon it
moves it from its
crouched place barring
the way to and from the soul's hall — out in the light it
shows clear, whether
shrunken or known as
a giant wrath — discrete
at least, where before

its great shadow joined
the walls and roof and seemed
to uphold the hall like a beam.