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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.

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
Human
Dew
Humans
Pale
Honey
Slowly
Flowers
Lapped
Gold
Thicken
Flower
Darken
Light
Beads

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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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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 certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
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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.
Denise Levertov
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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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The artist must create himself or be born again.
Denise Levertov
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And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
Denise Levertov
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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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Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
Denise Levertov
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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.
Denise Levertov
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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.
Denise Levertov
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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.
Denise Levertov
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The threat of world's end is the old threat.
Denise Levertov
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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
Denise Levertov
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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?
Denise Levertov
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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
Denise Levertov
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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.
Denise Levertov
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Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
Denise Levertov
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Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
Denise Levertov
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I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
Denise Levertov