So much is in bud

"...But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
- so much is in bud.

...We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud."

'Beginners', Denise Levertov

So much is in bud

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106491954401233999557/albums/6082193697763437841

Looking’s a way of being

Looking, Walking, Being
Denise Levertov

“The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in.”
Mark Rudman

I look and look.
Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That’s
a way of breathing.

breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.

Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus [excerpt]

ii Gloria

Praise the wet snow
falling early.

Praise the shadow
my neighbor's chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.

Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow.

Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
our daily life,
and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.

Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.


Denise Levertov

May Mornings

May Mornings
Denise Levertov

May mornings wear
light cashmere shawls of quietness,
brush back waterfalls of
burnished silk from
clear and round brows.

When we see them approaching
over lawns, trailing
dewdark shadows and footprints,
we remember, ah
yes, the May mornings,

how could we have forgotten,
what solace
it would be in the bitter violence
of fire then ice again we
apprehend – but

it seems the May mornings
are a presence known
only as they pass
light stepped, seriously smiling, bearing
each a leaflined basket
of wakening flowers.

Hold fast what seems ephemera

 
A South Wind

Short grass, electric green, the ground
soggy from winter rain, Chaucerian
eyes of day, minute petals rose-tented,
nourished by droppings of ducks and geese.

Hold fast what seems ephemera -
plain details that rise clear
beyond the fogs of half-thoughts,
that rustling static, empty of metaphor.

Nothing much, or everything; all depends
on how you regard it.
On if you regard it.

Note the chalk -
yellow of hazel catkins, how in the wet
mild wind they swing toward spring.

Denise Levertov, 'Sands of the Well'

Speak

I want to speak to you.
To whom else should I speak?
It is you who make
a world to speak of.
In your warmth the
fruits ripen–all the
apples and pears that grow
on the south wall of my
head. If you listen
it rains for them, then
they drink. If you
speak in response
the seeds
jump into the ground.

Denise Levertov

Provisional

Of Being

I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences-
great suffering, great fear-

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable, this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:this mystery.

Denise Levertov