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

More quotes by Denise Levertov

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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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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.
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Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
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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.
Denise Levertov
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I watch the clouds as I see them in pomp advancing, pursuing the fallen sun.
Denise Levertov
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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.
Denise Levertov
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Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
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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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
Denise Levertov
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The threat of world's end is the old threat.
Denise Levertov
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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.
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.
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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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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The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
Denise Levertov
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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 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 fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
Denise Levertov
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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.
Denise Levertov
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Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
Denise Levertov