September 1961

This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.

The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones

have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.

They are not dying,
they are withdrawn
into a painful privacy

learning to live without words.
E. P. "It looks like dying"-Williams: "I can't
describe to you what has been

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poem by Denise Levertov
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In California During the Gulf War

Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,

certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink--
a delicate abundance. They seemed

like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.

To some of us, the dejected landscape consorted well
with our shame and bitterness. Skies ever-blue,
daily sunshine, disgusted us like smile-buttons.

Yet the blossoms, clinging to thin branches
more lightly than birds alert for flight,
lifted the sunken heart

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poem by Denise Levertov
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Clouds

The clouds as I see them, rising
urgently, roseate in the
mounting of somber power

surging in evening haste over
roofs and hermetic
grim walls—

Last night
As if death had lit a pale light
in your flesh, your flesh
was cold to my touch, or not cold
but cool, cooling, as if the last traces
of warmth were still fading in you.
My thigh burned in cold fear where
yours touched it.

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poem by Denise Levertov
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Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell

Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on the dried sweat of his body
no one had washed and anointed, is here,
for sequence is not known in Limbo;
the promise, given from cross to cross
at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.
All these He will swiftly lead
to the Paradise road: they are safe.
That done, there must take place that struggle
no human presumes to picture:

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poem by Denise Levertov
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News Report, September 1991

U.S. BURIED IRAQI SOLDIERS ALIVE IN GULF WAR

'What you saw was a
bunch of trenches with
arms sticking out.'
'Plows mounted on
tanks. Combat
earthmovers.'
'Defiant.'
'Buried.'
'Carefully planned and
rehearsed.'
'When we
went through there wasn't
anybody left.'
'Awarded
Silver Star.'
'Reporters
banned.'
'Not a single

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poem by Denise Levertov
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Zeroing In

"I am a landscape," he said.
"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
And plains glad in their way
of brown monotony. But especially
there are sinkholes, places
of sudden terror, of small circumference
and malevolent depths."
"I know," she said. "When I set forth
to walk in myself, as it might be
on a fine afternoon, forgetting,
sooner or later I come to where sedge
and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,
mark the bogland, and I know
there are quagmires there that can pull you
down, and sink you in bubbling mud."
"We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy,
a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot
on his head, if you happened
just to touch it he'd jump up yelping

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poem by Denise Levertov
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Psalm Concerning the Castle

Let me be at the place of the castle.
Let the castle be within me.
Let it rise foursquare from the moat's ring.
Let the moat's waters reflect green plumage of ducks, let
   the shells of swimming turtles break the surface or be
   seen through the rippling depths.
Let horsemen be stationed at the rim of it, and a dog,
   always alert on the brink of sleep.
Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water
   lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer upon
   them; let a boat be kept there.
Let the caryatids of the second storey be bears upheld on
   beams that are dragons.
On the parapet of the central room, let there be four
   archers, looking off to the four horizons. Within, let
   the prince be at home, let him sit in deep thought, at
   peace, all the windows open to the loggias.
Let the young queen sit above, in the cool air, her child in
   her arms; let her look with joy at the great circle, the
   pilgrim shadows, the work of the sun and the play of

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poem by Denise Levertov
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A Map Of The Western Part Of The County Of Essex In England

Something forgotten for twenty years: though my fathers
and mothers came from Cordova and Vitepsk and Caernarvon,
and though I am a citizen of the United States and less a
stranger here than anywhere else, perhaps,
I am Essex-born:
Cranbrook Wash called me into its dark tunnel,
the little streams of Valentines heard my resolves,
Roding held my head above water when I thought it was
drowning me; in Hainault only a haze of thin trees
stood between the red doubledecker buses and the boar-hunt,
the spirit of merciful Phillipa glimmered there.
Pergo Park knew me, and Clavering, and Havering-atte-Bower,
Stanford Rivers lost me in osier beds, Stapleford Abbots
sent me safe home on the dark road after Simeon-quiet evensong,
Wanstead drew me over and over into its basic poetry,
in its serpentine lake I saw bass-viols among the golden dead leaves,
through its trees the ghost of a great house. In
Ilford High Road I saw the multitudes passing pale under the
light of flaring sundown, seven kings
in somber starry robes gathered at Seven Kings

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poem by Denise Levertov
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From the Roof

This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers
      &n bsp;   animal vines twisting over the line and
           slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
           in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
I recall out of my joy a night of misery

walking in the dark and the wind over broken earth,
      &nb sp;   halfmade foundations and unfinished
       ;    drainage trenches and the spaced-out
       ;               circles of glaring light
      &nbs p;   marking streets that were to be
walking with you but so far from you,

and now alone in October's
first decision towards winter, so close to you--
      &nbs p;   my arms full of playful rebellious linen, a freighter
           going down-river two blocks away, outward bound,
      &nb sp;   the green wolf-eyes of the Harborside Terminal
      & nbsp;       &n bsp;     glittering on the Jersey shore,
and a train somewhere under ground bringing you towards me

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poem by Denise Levertov
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Matins

i

The authentic! Shadows of it
sweep past in dreams, one could say imprecisely,
evoking the almost-silent
ripping apart of giant
sheets of cellophane. No.
It thrusts up close. Exactly in dreams
it has you off-guard, you
recognize it before you have time.
For a second before waking
the alarm bell is a red conical hat, it
takes form.

ii

The authentic! I said
rising from the toilet seat.

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poem by Denise Levertov
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