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

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

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our nerve filaments twitch with its presence day and night, nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying, nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.
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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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The artist must create himself or be born again.
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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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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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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
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Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak of our own doubts, while dubiously we mother man in his doubt!
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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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Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
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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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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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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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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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But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
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Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
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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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Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
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Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
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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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At Delphi I prayed to Apollo that he maintain in me the flame of the poem and I drank of the brackish spring there.
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