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"I learn to affirm
Truth's light at strange turns of the mind's road,
wrong turns that lead
over the border into wonder...."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "The Illustration." |
"I am Essex-born:
Cranbrook Wash called me into its dark tunnel,
the little streams of Valentines heard my resolves,
Roding held my head above water when I thought it was
drowning me...."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England." |
"The grapes
that need frost to ripen them
are amber and grow deep in the
hedge, half-concealed,
the way your beauty grows in long tendrils
half in darkness."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "Love Song." |
"It is of stone.
A rosy stone that takes
a glowing tone of softness
only because behind it the sky is a doubtful, a doubting
night gray."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "The Jacob's Ladder." |
"dark
presences slowly
focus
revelation of
tulip blacks, delicate
browns"
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "A March." |
"Love is a landscape the long mountains
define but don't
shut off from the
unseeable distance."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "Love Song." |
"and a man climbing
must scrape his knees, and bring
the grip of his hands into play. The cut stone
consoles his groping feet. Wings brush past him.
The poem ascends."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "The Jacob's Ladder." |
"filing
endlessly through his blue
blinking eyes into
the world within him"
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "A March." |
"The sun
on my whiteness and your
tawny gold. Without looking
I see through my lashes the iridescence
on black curls of sexual hair."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-U.S. poet. "Luxury." |
"The stairway is not
a thing of gleaming strands
a radiant evanescence
for angels' feet that only glance in their tread, and need not
touch the stone."
Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo-American poet. The Jacob's Ladder (l. 1-5). . .
Poems 1960-1967 [Denise Levertov]. (1983) New Directions. |
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