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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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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
Days
Eagles
Seen
Grey
Knowing
Unseen
Women
Visit
Home
Vast
Live
Presence
Come
Price
Mountain
Neighboring

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One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.
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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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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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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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In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
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The threat of world's end is the old threat.
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Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
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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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I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
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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.
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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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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
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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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Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
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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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But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
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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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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
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