Levertov - Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967

As you read, a white bear leisurely pees, dyeing the snow saffron, and as you read, many gods lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian are watching the generations of leaves, and as you read the sea is turning its dark pages, turning its dark pages. Rabbi Moshe (of Kobiyn) taught: It is written: And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth. That he is every man. Every man must know: I am clay, I am one of countless shards of clay, but the top of it reached to heavenmy soul reaches to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it even the ascent and descent of the angels depend on my deeds. Tales of the Hasidim: Later Masters by Martin Buber. Pasternak Not common speech a dead level but the uncommon speech of paradise, tongue in which oracles speak to beggars and pilgrims: not illusion but what Whitman called the path between reality and the soul, a language excelling itself to be itself, speech akin to the light with which at days end and days renewal, mountains sing to each other across the cold valleys. i On the kitchen wall a flash of shadow: Swift pilgrimage of pigeons, a spiral celebration of air, of sky-deserts. i On the kitchen wall a flash of shadow: Swift pilgrimage of pigeons, a spiral celebration of air, of sky-deserts.

And on tenement windows a blaze of lustered watermelon: stain of the sun westering somewhere back of Hoboken. ii The goatherd upstairs! Music from his sweet flute roves from summer to summer in the dusty air of airshafts and among the flakes of soot that float in a daze from chimney to chimneynotes remote, cool, speaking of slender shadows under olive-leaves. A silence. iii Groans, sighs, in profusion, with coughing, muttering, orchestrate solitary grief; the crash of glass, a low voice repeating over and over, No. No. I want my key.

No you did not. No.a commonplace. And in counterpoint, from other windows, the effort to be merryay, maracas! sibilant, intricatethe voices wailing pleasure, arriving perhaps at joy, late, after sets have been switched off, and silences are dark windows?

In some special way every person completes the universe. If he does not play his part, he injures the pattern of all existence. Babbi Judah Loeto Homer da Vinci with freckles on your nose dont hang there by the heels. Sad everyman, I mean let go, or jerk upright.

They say gooseflesh is the bodys shudder when someone walks over its grave-to-be, but my hair rises to see your living life tamped down. Blue mysteries of the veronica florets entertain your modest attention: there, where you live, live: start over, everyman, with the algae of your dreams. Man gets his daily bread in sweat, but no one said in daily death. Dont eat those nice green dollars your wife gives you for breakfast.

i A changing skyline. A slice of window filled in by a middle-distance oblong topped by little moving figures.

You are speaking flatly, as one drinks a glass of milk (for calcium). Suddenly the milk spills, a torrent of black milk hurtles through the room, bubbling and seething into the corners. ii But then I was another person! The building veiled in scaffolding. When the builders leave, tenants will move in, pervading cubic space with breath and dreams. Odor of newmade memories will loiter in the hallways, noticed by helpless dogs and young children. iii I had meant to say only. iii I had meant to say only.

The skylines changing, The windows allowance of sky is smaller but more intensely designed, sprinkled with human gestures. Thats not enough. Ah, if youve not seen it its not enough. Alright. Its true. Nothing is ever enough.

Images split the truth in fractions. And milk of speech is black lava. The sky is sliced into worthless glass diamonds. iv Again: middle of a night. Silences lifting bright eyes that brim with smiles and painful stone tears. Will you believe it, in this very room cloud-cuckoos unfledged themselves, shedding feathers and down, showed themselves small, monstrous, paltry in death? In the dark when the past lays its hand on your heart, cant you recall that hour of death and new daylight? v But how irrelevantly the absurd angel of happiness walks in, a box of matches in one hand, in the other a book of dream-jokes.

I wake up laughing, tell you: I was writing an ad for goldgold cups, gold porridge-bowlsGold, beautiful, durableWhile I mused for a third adjective, you were preparing to leave for three weeksHeres the check. And perhaps in a week or so Ill be able to send you a pound of tomatoes. Then you laugh too, and we clasp in naked laughter, trembling with tenderness and relief. Meanwhile the angel, dressed for laughs as a plasterer, puts a match to whatevers lying in the grate: broken scaffolds, empty cocoons, the paraphernalia of unseen change. Our eyes smart from the smoke but we laugh and warm ourselves.

An old man whose black face shines golden-brown as wet pebbles under the streetlamp, is walking two mongrel dogs of disproportionate size, in the rain, in the relaxed early-evening avenue.

The small sleek one wants to stop, docile to the imploring soul of the trashbasket, but the young tall curly one wants to walk on; the glistening sidewalk entices him to arcane happenings. Increasing rain. The old bareheaded man smiles and grumbles to himself. The lights change: the avenues endless nave echoes notes of liturgical red. He drifts between his dogs desires.

A dolls hair concealing an eggshell skull delicately throbbing, within which maggots in voluptuous unrest jostle and shrug. A dolls hair concealing an eggshell skull delicately throbbing, within which maggots in voluptuous unrest jostle and shrug.

Oh, Eileen, my big doll, your gold hair was not more sunny than this human fur, but your head was radiant in its emptiness, a small clean room. Her warm and rosy mouth is telling liesshe would believe them if she could believe; her pretty eyes search out corruption. Oh, Eileen, how kindly your silence was, and what virtue shone in the opening and shutting of your ingenious blindness.

The screendoor whines, clacks shut. My thoughts crackle with seaweed-seething diminishing flickers of phosphorus. Gulp of a frog, plash of herring leaping; interval; squawk of a gull disturbed, a splashing; pause while silence poises for the breaking bark of a seal: but silence.

Then only your breathing. Ill be quiet too. Out stove, out lamp, let night cut the question with profound unanswer, sustained echo of our unknowing.

While we sleep mudflats will gleam in moonwane, and mirror earliest wan daybreak in pockets and musselshell hillocks, before a stuttering, through dreams, of lobsterboats going out, a half awakening, a reliving of ebbing dreams as morning ocean returns to us, a turning from light towards more dreams, intelligence of what pulls at our depths for design. I hear the tide turning. Last eager wave over taken and pulled back by first wave of the ebb.

The pull back by moon-ache. The great knots of moon-awake energy far out.

When the white fog burns off, the abyss of everlasting light is revealed. The last cobwebs of fog in the black firtrees are flakes of white ash in the worlds hearth. Cold of the sea is counterpart to this great fire. Plunging out of the burning cold of ocean we enter an ocean of intense noon.

Sacred salt sparkles on our bodies. After mist has wrapped us again in fine wool, may the taste of salt recall to us the great depths about us.