Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
Denise Levertovwas a British-born American poet...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 October 1923
block silence police
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.
animal track joy
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?
dream hair splits
And our dreams, with what frivolity we have pared them like toenails, clipped them like ends of split hair.
heart thinking blue
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.
mother hypocrite men
Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak of our own doubts, while dubiously we mother man in his doubt!
sea shining world
Through the hollow globe, a ring of frayed rusty scrapiron, is it the sea that shines? Is it a road at the world's edge?
money nice wife
Don't eat those nice green dollars your wife gives you for breakfast.
men joy solitude
A blind man. I can stare at him ashamed, shameless. Or does he know it? No, he is in a great solitude. O, strange joy, to gaze my fill at a stranger's face. No, my thirst is greater than before.
life mistake spring
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....
wall mountain wavering
Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
loss admitting disaster
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
women home eagles
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.
splits fractions
Images split the truth in fractions.