Denise Levertov's Incredible Poetry

Adam's Complaint
Denise Levertov

Some people,

no matter what you give them,

still want the moon.

The bread, the salt,

white meat and dark,

still hungry.

The marriage bed and the cradle,

still empty arms.

You give them land,

their own earth under their feet,

still they take to the roads.

And water: dig them the deepest well,

still it's not deep enough

to drink the moon from.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The Avowal
By Denise Levertov

As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air and air

sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Despair
By Denise Levertov

While we were visiting David’s grave
I saw at a little distance

a woman hurrying towards another grave
hands outstretched, stumbling

in her haste; who then
fell at the stone she made for

and lay sprawled upon it, sobbing,
sobbing and crying out to it.

She was neatly dressed in a pale coat
and seemed neither old nor young.

I couldn’t see her face, and my friends
seemed not to know she was there.

Not to distress them, I said nothing.
But she was not an apparition.

And when we walked
back to the car in silence

I stood stealthily back and saw she rose
and quieted herself and began slowly

to back away from the grave.
Unlike David, who lives

in our lives, it seemed
whoever she mourned dwelt

there, in the field, under stone.
It seemed the woman

believed whom she loved heard her,
heard her wailing, observed

the nakedness of her anguish,
and would not speak.

~from: “Denise Levertov Poems 1968 - 1972”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Denise Levertov's Books of Poetry

The Double Image (1946)
The Sharks (1952)
Here and Now (1956)
Overland to the Islands (1958)
With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1959)
The Jacob's Ladder (1961)
O Taste and See: New Poems (1964)
The Sorrow Dance (1967)
Life At War (1968)
At the Justice Department, November 15, 1969
Relearning the Alphabet (1970)
To Stay Alive (1971)
Footprints (1972)
The Freeing of the Dust (1975)
Life in the Forest (1978)
Wedding-Ring (1978)
Collected Earlier Poems 1940-1960 (1979)
Candles in Babylon (1982)
The May Mornings(1982)
Poems 1960-1967 (1983)
Oblique Prayers: New Poems (1984)
Selected Poems (1986)
Poems 1968-1972 (1987)
Breathing the Water (1987)
A Door in the Hive (1989)
Evening Train (1992)
A Door in the Hive / Evening Train (1993)
The Sands of the Well (1996)
The Life Around Us: Selected Poems on Nature (1997)
The Stream & the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes (1997)
Living

Denise Levertov's Books of Prose:

The Poet in the World (1973)
Light Up the Cave (1981)
New & Selected Essays (1992)
Tesserae: Memories & Suppositions (1995)
The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams, edited by Christopher MacGowan (1998).
The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, edited by Robert J. Bertholf & Albert Gelpi. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.