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At Delphi I prayed to Apollo that he maintain in me the flame of the poem and I drank of the brackish spring there.

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
Spring
Delphi
Poet
Prayed
Poetry
Apollo
Prayer
Drank
Flame
Flames
Maintain
Poem
Brackish

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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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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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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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Images split the truth in fractions.
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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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The artist must create himself or be born again.
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In the dark I rest, unready for the light which dawns day after day, eager to be shared. Black silk, shelter me. I need more of the night before I open eyes and heart to illumination. I must still grow in the dark like a root not ready, not ready at all.
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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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In June the bush we call alder was heavy, listless, its leaves studded with galls, growing wherever we didn't want it.
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Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
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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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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
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Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
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I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
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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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In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
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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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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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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
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