Denise Levertov
Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.Collection: Teacher
Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons off the tree! I don't want to forget who I am, what has burned in me, and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -Collection: Who I Am
I don't think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.Collection: Book
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")Collection: Dog
The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.Collection: Summer
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.Collection: Women
Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.Collection: Girl
Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.Collection: Butterfly
Death and pain dominate this world, for though many are cured, they leave still weak, still tremulous, still knowing mortality has whispered to them; have seen in the folding of white bedspreads according to rule the starched pleats of a shroud.Collection: Pain
In city, in suburb, in forest, no way to stretch out the arms - so if you would grow, go straight up or deep down.Collection: Cities
Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Laughter