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.
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!
money nice wife
Don't eat those nice green dollars your wife gives you for breakfast.
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.
world ends threat
The threat of world's end is the old threat.
night years numbers
Among a hundred windows shining dully in the vast side of greater-than-palace number such-and-such one burns these several years, each night as if the room within were aflame.
laughter eye hands
Yes, he is here in this open field, in sunlight, among the few young trees set out to modify the bare facts-- he's here, but only because we are here. When we go, he goes with us to be your hands that never do violence, your eyes that wonder, your lives that daily praise life by living it, by laughter. He is never alone here, never cold in the field of graves.
night years wonder
Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
girl two secret
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.
dog children sleep
I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire— it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirror—no longer young, the news—always of death, the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling.... ("Seeing For a Moment")