Denise Levertov Poems

Long after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:
...

Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck
and stroked your cold, pulsing throat
as you hissed to me, glinting
arrowy gold scales, and I felt
...

This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers
          animal vines twisting over the line and
          slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
          in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
...

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.
...

After I had cut off my hands
and grown new ones

something my former hands had longed for
...

O Eros, silently smiling one, hear me.
Let the shadow of thy wings
brush me.
Let thy presence
...

From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
...

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That's why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
...

The Rav
of Northern White Russia declined,
in his youth, to learn the
language of birds, because
...

Bricks of the wall,
so much older than the house -
taken I think from a farm pulled down
when the street was built -
...