Denise Levertov Quotes

In the dark I rest, unready for the light which dawns day after day, eager to be shared. Black silk, shelter me. I need more of the night before I open eyes and heart to illumination. I must still grow in the dark like a root not ready, not ready at all.

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

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

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.

It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.

Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons off the tree! I don't want to forget who I am, what has burned in me, and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.

The Avowal 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.

There comes a time when only anger is love.

I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire— it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirror—no longer young, the news—always of death, the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling.... ("Seeing For a Moment")

Yes, he is here in this open field, in sunlight, among the few young trees set out to modify the bare facts-- he's here, but only because we are here. When we go, he goes with us to be your hands that never do violence, your eyes that wonder, your lives that daily praise life by living it, by laughter. He is never alone here, never cold in the field of graves.

Fire he sang, that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames. New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer. As though his lyre (now I knew its name) were both frost and fire, its chords flamed up to the crown of me. I was seed again. I was fern in the swamp. I was coal. ("A Tree Telling of Orpheus")

I am, a shadow that grows longer as the sun moves, drawn out on a thread of wonder. If I bear burdens they begin to be remembered as gifts, goods, a basket of bread that hurts my shoulders but closes me in fragrance. I can eat as I go. ("Stepping Westward")

Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; caps and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng's clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, 0 Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it.

لقد اختار حياةً مُلقاةً عند شفير… هو يعلم أنّه لو استطاع الرؤية فلن يكونَ أكثر حكمة. عالياً فوق جُرْف تعصفُ فيه الريح يتنفّسُ وجهاً لوجه مع الرغبة.

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...

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")

Some people, no matter what you give them, still want the moon. The bread, the salt, white meat and dark meat, still hungry. The marriage bed and the cradle, still empty arms. You give them land, their own earth under their feet, still they take to the roads. And water: dig them the deepest, still it’s not deep enough to drink the moon from.

The world is not with us enough.

An awe so quiet I don't know when it began. A gratitude had begun to sing in me. Was there some moment dividing song from no song? When does dewfall begin? When does night fold its arms over our hearts to cherish them? When is daybreak?

L’éternité ne fut jamais perdue. Ce qui nous a manqué Fut plutôt de savoir La traduire en journées, En ciels, en paysages, En paroles pour d’autres, En gestes vérifiables. Mais la garder pour nous N’était pas difficile Et les moments étaient présents Où nous paraissait clair Que nous étions l’éternité. Eternity never was lost. What we did not know was how to translate it into days, skies, landscapes, into words for others, authentic gestures. But holding on to it for ourselves, that was not difficult, and there were moments when it seemed clear to us we ourselves were eternity. Translation by Denise Levertov

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.

Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.

Night is breathing close to us, dark, soft.

and nothing was burning, nothing but I,

Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone to show you how your longing waits alone. What alchemy shines from under that shut door, spinning out gold from the hollow of the heart? ("The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart")

A voice from the dark called out, "The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war." But peace, like a poem, is not there ahead of itself, can't be imagined before it is made, can't be known except in the words of its making, grammar of justice, syntax of mutual aid. A feeling towards it, dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have until we begin to utter its metaphors, learning them as we speak. A line of peace might appear if we restructured the sentence our lives are making, revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, questioned our needs, allowed long pauses. . . . A cadence of peace might balance its weight on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence, an energy field more intense than war, might pulse then, stanza by stanza into the world, each act of living one of its words, each word a vibration of light--facets of the forming crystal.

Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles, of knowing a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.

When he opens his eyes he gives to what he gazes at the recognition no look ever before granted it. It becomes a word.

I moonbathed diligently, as others sunbathe.

To speak of sorrow works upon it moves it from its crouched place barring the way to and from the soul's hall.

It’s when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart. —Denise Levertov

The Broken Sandal" Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke. Nothing to hold it to my foot. How shall I walk? Barefoot? The sharp stones, the dirt. I would hobble. And– Where was I going? Where was I going I can't go to now, unless hurting? Where am I standing, if I'm to stand still now?

Sometimes the mountain is hidden from me in veils of cloud, sometimes I am hidden from the mountain in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue, when I forget or refuse to go down to the shore or a few yards up the road, on a clear day, to reconfirm that witnessing presence.

Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog who comes in the back door for a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you. I should coax you into the house and give you your own corner, a worn mat to lie on, your own water dish. You think I don't know you've been living under my porch. You long for a real place to be readied before winter comes. You need the right to warn off intruders, to consider my house your own and me your person and yourself my own dog.

And we, frightened, bored, wanting only to sleep till catastrophe has raged, clashed, seethed and gone by without us, wanting then to awaken in quietude without remembrance of agony, we who in shamefaced private hope had looked to be plucked from fire and given a bliss we deserved for having imagined it, is it implied that we must protect this perversely weak animal, whose muzzle’s nudgings suppose there is milk to be found in us? Must hold to our icy hearts a shivering God?

What I invaded has invaded me.

I witnessed all things quicken to color, to form my question not answered but given its part in a vast unfolding design lit by a rising sun.

Can you endure life with two brides, bridegroom?

The poet does not use poetry, but is at the service of poetry. To use it is to misuse it.

And on our lips the blood of berries before we kiss,

1) Did the people of Viet Nam use lanterns of stone? 2) Did they hold ceremonies to reverence the opening of buds? 3) Were they inclined to quiet laughter? 4) Did they use bone and ivory, jade and silver, for ornament? 5) Had they an epic poem? 6) Did they distinguish between speech and singing? 1) Sir, their light hearts turned to stone. It is not remembered whether in gardens stone lanterns illumined pleasant ways. 2) Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom, but after the children were killed there were no more buds. 3) Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth. 4) A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy. All the bones were charred. 5) It is not remembered. Remember, most were peasants; their life was in rice and bamboo. When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces, maybe fathers told their sons old tales. When bombs smashed those mirrors there was time only to scream. 6) There is an echo yet of their speech which was like a song. It was reported their singing resembled the flight of moths in moonlight. Who can say? It is silent now.

Your secret was not the craftsman's delight in process, which doesn't distinguish work from pleasure-- your way was not to exalt nor avoid the Adamic legacy, you simply made it irrelevant: everything faded, thinned to nothing, beside the light which bathed and warmed, the Presence your being had opened to. Where it shone, there life was, and abundantly; it touched your dullest task, and the task was easy.

I am so small, a speck of dust moving across the huge world. The world a speck of dust in the universe. Are you holding the universe? You hold onto my smallness. How do you grasp it, how does it not slip away? I know so little. You have brought me so far.

That Passeth All Understanding" An awe so quiet I don’t know when it began. A gratitude had begun to sing in me. Was there some moment dividing song from no song? When does dewfall begin? When does night fold its arms over our hearts to cherish them? When is daybreak?

Plato’s term for soul-suture: “the fastening of heaven.” Rumi’s term: “the cord of causation.” Plotinus’s: “our tutelary spirit, not bound up with our nature, not the agent in our action, belonging to us as belonging to our soul, as the power which consummates the chosen life.” And American poets have discovered this magic, too! Denise Levertov speaks of a thread, finer than spider’s silk, that pulls at her, keeps her company, guides her. William Stafford speaks of a thread we can follow as it pierces things that change, yet itself never changes. That these spirit threads, as Plotinus says, aren’t ours, that they’re the soul’s own unbreakable extensions, is why they have the

The world is not with us enough O taste and see the subway Bible poster said, meaning The Lord, meaning if anything all that lives to the imagination’s tongue, grief, mercy, language, tangerine, weather, to breathe them, bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform into our flesh our deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince, living in the orchard and being hungry, and plucking the fruit.

so many writers and readers, that “deep spiritual longing” Jorie Graham speaks of, seems to underscore the irrelevance to literature, for both writer and reader, of the kind of criticism currently prevalent in the academic world —a criticism which treats works of art as if they were diagrams or merely means provided for the exercise of analysis, rather than what they are: testimonies of lived life, which is what writers have a vocation to give, and readers (including those who write) have a need to receive.

Like everyone else I needed occasional reassurance, a word of approval, a warning against some weakness; but I knew, somehow, what Rilke’s words now stated for me, that the underlying necessity was to ask not others but oneself for confirmation. And he specified the primary question not as “Is what I have written any good?” but rather, “Must I write?” I came at some point to recognize that when he says Herr Kappus ought to continue only if he could honestly answer “Yes,” he meant the question (for every poet) to be a perennial one, not something asked and settled once and for all. Likewise, when, in the same letter, he states that “a work of art is good only if it has grown out of necessity,” he is not merely repeating that injunction; the first imperative had to do with an initial sense of being inexorably drawn to the making of poems, while this second one demands that the poet apply the same standard to each separate work.

I do not at all have a sense of luring anyone into the poetic by catching hold of them through my subject matter. The idea appalls me in fact. Some events — whether a tree in a certain light, a Mexican family looking at the movie stills outside the cinema, a dream, my own condition of being in or out of love, of some epiphany relating to husband, child, friend, cat or dog, street or painting, cloud or stone, a book read, a story heard, a life thought about, a demonstration lived through, a situation, historical and/or topical, (that’s to say known in the moment of its passing into history) — it doesn’t matter, the list is endless, but some events (selected by some interior mysterious process out of all the other minutes and hours of my life) begin to form themselves in my understanding as phrases, images, rhythms of language, demand to be further formed, demand midwifery is one way to put it. Not all that one feels most strongly makes this verbal demand, even if one is a poet — by poet here I mean prose writer too — … but whatever experiences do demand it are always strongly felt ones. That is my testimony.

Those groans men use passing a woman on the street or on the steps of the subway to tell her she is a female and their flesh knows it, are they a sort of tune, an ugly enough song, sung by a bird with a slit tongue but meant for music? Or are they the muffled roaring of deafmutes trapped in a building that is slowly filling with smoke? Perhaps both. Such men most often look as if groan were all they could do, yet a woman, in spite of herself, knows it's a tribute: if she were lacking all grace they'd pass her in silence: so it's not only to say she's a warm hole. It's a word in grief-language, nothing to do with primitive, not an ur-language; language stricken, sickened, cast down in decrepitude. She wants to throw the tribute away, dis- gusted, and can't, it goes on buzzing in her ear, it changes the pace of her walk, the torn posters in echoing corridors spell it out, it quakes and gnashes as the train comes in. Her pulse sullenly had picked up speed, but the cars slow down and jar to a stop while her understanding keeps on translating: 'Life after life after life goes by without poetry, without seemliness, without love.

The ache of marriage: thigh and tongue, beloved, are heavy with it, it throbs in the teeth We look for communion and are turned away, beloved, each and each It is leviathan and we in its belly looking for joy, some joy not to be known outside it two by two in the ark of the ache of it.

Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure their scintillant fur, their dust. You are given the questions of others as if they were answers to all you ask. Yes, perhaps this gift is your answer.

The roses tremble; oh, the sunflower's eye Is opened wide in sad expectancy. Westward and back the circling swallows fly, The rooks' battalions dwindle near the hill. That low pulsation in the east is war: No bell now breaks the evening's silent dream. The bloodless clarity of evening's sky Betrays no whisper of the battle-scream.

To the Reader" As you read, a white bear leisurely pees, dyeing the snow saffron, and as you read, many gods lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian are watching the generations of leaves, and as you read the sea is turning its dark pages, turning its dark pages.

What I invaded as invaded me.

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.

..and as you read the sea is turning its dark pages, turning its dark pages.

Each minute the last minute.

holiness does not dissolve,

Words taken by lips, tongue, teeth, throat, down into body’s caverns, to enter blood, bone, breath,

When I opened the door I found the vine leaves speaking among themselves in abundant whispers. My presence made them hush their green breath, embarrassed, the way humans stand up, buttoning their jackets, acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if the conversation had ended just before you arrived. I liked the glimpse I had, though, of their obscure gestures. I liked the sound of such private voices. Next time I’ll move like cautious sunlight, open the door by fractions, eavesdrop peacefully.

As Andersen told it, the tale was not for young children, not even called ‘The Little’-just, ‘The Mermaid.’ It’s about love and grief, a myth of longing and sacrifice, far closer, say, to Goethe’s Parable than to any jovial folktale, much less to today’s manufactured juvenile distractions.

This great unknowing is part of their holiness.

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.

I wanted to know all the bones in your spine, all the pores of your skin, tendrils of body hair. To let all of my skin, my hands, ankles, shoulders, breasts, even my shadow, be forever imprinted with whatever of you is forever unknown of me.

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.

He quotes Ezra Pound saying in a 1948 manifesto, “You must understand what is happening”; and makes it clear the significant emphasis is on “what is happening,” the presentness, the process. “Most verse,” Duncan comments, “is something being made up to communicate a thing already present in the mind— or a lot of it is. And don’t pay the attention it shld to what the poet don’t know—and won’t [know] until the process speaks.

Hugh Kenner, in a lecture, beautifully defined what poets seek if they really are poets) as “the power to make things as moving as the things they have been moved by.

One can anyway only be shown something one knows already, needs already. Showing anyone anything really amounts to removing the last thin film that prevents their seeing what they are looking at.

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.

When I am a woman — O, when I am a woman, my wells of salt brim and brim, poems force the lock of my throat.

FOR THE NEW YEAR, 1981 I have a small grain of hope— one small crystal that gleams clear colors out of transparency. I need more. I break off a fragment to send you. Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink. Please share your fragment so that yours will grow. Only so, by division, will hope increase, like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source— clumsy and earth-covered— of grace.

বিবাহের অবিরাম বেদনা বিবাহের অবিরাম বেদনা: উরু আর জিভ, হে প্রিয়, এর সঙ্গে বেশ ভারি, তা দাঁতে স্পন্দিত হয় আমরা আংশিদারীর চেষ্টা করি কিন্তু ফিরিয়ে দেয়া হয়, হে প্রিয়, প্রত্যেকে আর প্রত্যেকে এটা হল প্রকাণ্ড হাঙর আর আমরা তার পেটের ভেতরে আনন্দ খুঁজি, কোনও আনন্দ যা এর বাইরে জানা যাবে না দুই বনাম দুই এর সিন্দুকের মধ্যে এর অবিরাম বেদনা ।