Famous Quotes by Denise Levertov
- No skilled hands
caress a stranger’s flesh with lucid oil before
a word is... More
- I remember
a dream two nights ago: the voice,
‘the artist must
create himself or be... More
- and the deaf soul
struggles, strains forward, to lip-read what it needs:
and something is... More
- she
is kind and very clean without
ostentation
but she has
no imagination. More
- a
turbulent moon-ridden girl
or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags,... More
- Mountain, mountain, mountain,
marking time. Each
nameless, wall beyond wall,... More
- No alternative to the
one-man path. More
- ‘Joy is
so special a thing, vivid—’
her love for the earth
returns, her heart... More
- Seeing the locus of joy as the gate
of a city, or as a lych-gate ... More
- Joy, the, ‘well . . . joyfulness of
joy’M’many years
I had not known it,’ the... More
- Paradise, an
endless movie. You
walk in, sit down in the dark, it
draws you into itself. More
- As if
golden pollen were falling
onto your hair from dark trees. More
- Stir of time, the sequence
returning upon itself, branching
a new way. To suffer, pains,... More
- wander swerving
to wonder More
- A form upon the quilted
overcast, gleam, Sacrè
Coeur, saltlick
to the... More
- To speak of sorrow
works upon it
moves it from its
crouched place barring
the... More
- before its great shadow joined
the walls and roof and seemed
to uphold the hall like a beam. More
- The host, the housekeeper, it is
who fails you. He had forgotten
to make room for you at... More
- and wife or husband
who does not lock the door of the marriage
against you, finds... More
- and as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages. More
- As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron.... More
- Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck
and stroked your cold, pulsing throat More
- The motor idles.
Over the immense upland
the pulse of their blossoming
thunders... More
- A shadow
not of a bird, not of a cloud,
draws a dark stroke over
the hills, the... More
- eyes that see a
hand in the unclouded sky,
a human hand, release
wet fire, the rain... More
- She saw
her five young children
writhe and die;
in that hour
she began to watch... More
- In the dense light of wakened flesh
animal man is a prince. As from alabaster
a lucency... More
- All that blesses the step of the antelope
all the grace a giraffe lifts to the highest... More
- Woman fears for man, he goes
out alone to his labors. No mirror
nests in his pocket. More
- His sex hangs unhidden
or rises before him
blind and questing. More
- her being
is a cave, there are bones at the hearth. More
- Don’t lock me in wedlock, I want
marriage, an
encounter.... More
- I would be
met
and meet you
so,
in a green
airy space, not
locked in. More
- Sleeping, sleeping,
it is the
thunder of the serpent
drumroll of
the mounting... More
- jet, obsidian, ember
of bloodstone, glisten
of mineral green.
And what
hangs out... More
- speech akin to the light
with which at day’s end and day’s
renewal,... More
- Poems stirred
into paper coffee-cups, eaten
with petals on rye in the
sun—the cold... More
- To stand on common ground
here and there gritty with pebbles
yet elsewhere ‘fine and... More
- The pastor
of grief and dreams
guides his flock towards
the next field
with all... More
- ethereal, their mauve
almost a transparent gray,
their dark veins
bruise-blue. More
- A headless squirrel, some blood
oozing from the unevenly
chewed-off neck
lies in... More
- old Death, dusty
gardener, are you
alive yet, do I live on
yet, in your... More
- Old Day the gardener seemed
Death himself, or Time, scythe in hand
by the sundial and... More
- In the autumn brilliance
feathers tingle at fingertips. More
- a flying open of doors, convergence
of magic objects into
feathered hands and crested... More
- Grief, have I denied thee?
Grief, I have denied thee. More
- Grief in the morning, washed away
in coffee, crumbled to a dozen errands between
busy... More
- ... deeper
and deeper into Imagination’s
holy forest, as travelers
followed the... More
- I saw
without words within me, saw
as if my eyes
had grown bigger and knew
how to... More
- but you are not deaf,
you pick out
your own song from the uproar
line by... More
- ‘Living a life’—
the beauty of deep lines
dug in your cheeks. More
- a child who traced voyages
indelibly all over the atlas, who now in a far... More
- I am Essex-born:
Cranbrook Wash called me into its dark tunnel,
the little streams of... More
- dark
presences slowly
focus
revelation of
tulip blacks, delicate
browns More
- filing
endlessly through his blue
blinking eyes into
the world within him More
- If August passes
flowerless,
and the frosts come,
will I have learned to rejoice... More
- first the cotyledon
then thickly the differentiated
true leaves of the seedlings ... More
- On the Times Square sidewalk
we shuffle along, cardboard signs
Stop the War
slung... More
- It seems
you that is lifted
limp and ardent
off the dark snow
and shoved in, and... More
- In the gold mouth of a flower
the black smell of spring earth.
No more skulls on our... More
- Do you mistake me?
I am speaking of living,
of moving from one moment into
the next,... More
- Hair of man, man-hair, hair of
breast and groin, marking contour as
silverpoint marks in... More
- My great brother
Lord of the Song
wears the ruff of
forest bear. More
- Meanwhile the angel,
dressed for laughs as a plasterer,
puts a match to... More
- A changing skyline.
A slice of window filled in
by a middle-distancing oblong
topped... More
- But how irrelevantly
the absurd angel of happiness walks in.... More
- Nothing
is ever enough. Images
split the truth
in fractions. More
- Like dogs in Mexico,
furless, sore, misshapen,
arrives from laborious nowhere
Agony. More
- ... runs off
three-leggèd, scared,
but tarries nearby and will
return. A friend. More
- A blind man. I can stare at him
ashamed, shameless. Or does he know it?
No, he is in a... More
- ... his
different
quiet, not quiet at all, a tumult
of images, but what are his... More
- I see him
across the street, the blind man,
and now he says he can find his way. He... More
- The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has... More
- Quick! there’s that
low brief whirr to tell
Rubythroat is at the
tigerlilies.... More
- Hummingbird
stay for a fractional sharp
sweetness, and’s gone, can’t take
more... More
- But as these angels, the only halted ones
among the many who passed and repassed,
trod... More
- they remained free in the heavenly chasm,
remained angels, but dreaming angels,
each... More
- yes, set fire to frostbitten crops,
drag out forgotten fruit
to dance the... More
- Let me walk through the fields of paper
touching with my wand
dry stems and... More
- Among a hundred windows shining
dully in the vast side
of greater-than-palace number... More
- still I’m ready to believe perhaps
some lives
tremble and flare up there, four blocks... More
- We are a meadow where the bees hum:
mind and body are almost one More
- though the fall cold
surrounds our warm bed, and though
by day we are singular and... More
- mouth to mouth, the covers
pulled over our shoulders
we drowse as horses drowse... More
- putting his hope in certain death, lowering
his head again to the grass. More
- That sound, everywhere about us, of the sea—
the tree among its tresses has always heard... More
- I have seen
not behind but within, within the
dull grief, blown grit,... More
- not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue,
not that I thought there was... More
- The All-Day Bird, the artist,
whitethroated sparrow
striving
in hope and
good... More
- the shadow of a difference
falling between
note and note,
a hair’s... More
- Last night
as if death had lit a pale light
in your flesh, your flesh
was cold to my... More
- I watch the clouds as I see them
in pomp advancing, pursuing
the fallen sun. More
- Come into animal presence.
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely... More
- What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn’t
quicken his... More
- moving aside to give him
a place at the fire, the poet
made him welcome, asking
for... More
- Darling Death
shouted in his ear,
his ear made to record
the least, the most... More
- he bowed and
not flinching from her black breath
gave her his arm.... More
- he was sitting
and saying over
those green words
Laura and laurel
written in... More
- The blood we give the dead to drink
is deeds we do at the will of the dead spirits in... More
- Refuse them!
If we too miss out, don’t create our lives,
invent or deeds, do them,... More
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