Denise Levertov Poems

Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
...

When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
...

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
...

Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon.
...

Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,
...

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

Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
...

White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
          I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
          of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched,
...

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
...