Quote

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.

Denise Levertov

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Firsts
Boat
Moats
First
Kept
Glimmer
Stones
Slime
Green
Lap
Dark
Castles
Space
Vivid
Upon
Posts
Water
Stone

More quotes by Denise Levertov

Image
The artist must create himself or be born again.
Denise Levertov
Image
Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
Denise Levertov
Image
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 -
Denise Levertov
Image
But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
Denise Levertov
Image
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
Image
And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
Denise Levertov
Image
Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
Denise Levertov
Image
slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
Denise Levertov
Image
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.
Denise Levertov
Image
I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
Denise Levertov
Image
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.
Denise Levertov
Image
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.
Denise Levertov
Image
Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
Denise Levertov
Image
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.
Denise Levertov
Image
Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
Denise Levertov
Image
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.
Denise Levertov
Image
Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
Denise Levertov
Image
I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
Denise Levertov
Image
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.
Denise Levertov
Image
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.
Denise Levertov