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Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.

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
Sweetness
Breathe
Hovers
August

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The vast silence of Buddha overtakes and overrules the oncoming roar of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.
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The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains themso would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace.
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The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
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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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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
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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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Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
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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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Mediocrity is perhaps due not so much to lack of imagination as to lack of faith in the imagination, lack of the capacity for this abandon.
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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
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Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
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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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There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.
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You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.
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The artist must create himself or be born again.
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Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
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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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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.
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