Quote

In June the bush we call alder was heavy, listless, its leaves studded with galls, growing wherever we didn't want it.

Denise Levertov

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Denise Levertov
Age: 74 †
Born: 1923
Born: October 24
Died: 1997
Died: December 20
Poet
Translator
Writer
Ilford
London
Priscilla D Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertov
Bush
Leaves
Heavy
Growing
Call
Listless
Didn
Studded
June
Wherever

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But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
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The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
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A poet articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.
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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 -
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I believe every space and comma is a living part of the poem and has its function, just as every muscle and pore of the body has its function. And the way the lines are broken is a functioning part essential to the life of the poem.
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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
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What joy when the insouciant armadillo glances at us and doesn't quicken his trotting across the track into the palm brush. What is this joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do?
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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
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An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than happiness itself, a breathing too quiet to hear.
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Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
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Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.
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I'll dig in into my days, having come here to live, not to visit. Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles, of knowing a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.
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Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen.
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Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
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my pleasure was in the strength of my back, in my noble shoulders, the cool smooth flesh cylinders of my arms.
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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
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I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
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Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer upon them let a boat be kept there.
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Do you mistake me? I am speaking of living, of moving from one moment into the next, and into the one after, breathing death in the spring air.
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