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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.

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
Silence
Fills
Way
Buddha
Overrules
Life
Temples
Oncoming
Vietnam
Overtakes
Tragic
Roar
Vast
Alleys
Block
Blocks
Police
Avenues

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Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
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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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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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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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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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Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
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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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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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blue bead on the wick, there's that in me that burns and chills, blackening my heart with its soot, I think sometimes not Apollo heard me but a different god.
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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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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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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
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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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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
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And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
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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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Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
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Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
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