Showing posts with label Denise Levertov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denise Levertov. Show all posts

Thursday, June 20, 2024

The Summer Solstice 2024

 


SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD
by Denise Levertov

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension—though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal—then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers
just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
—but we have changed, a little.

Denise Levertov


I woke early, on this longest day:
the light rose among
 the green conversation 
of  trees, a fading star, exultant starlings,
  two grey squirrels 
performing their morning ritual
greeting the only God 
they know, 

the Sun

Lauren Raine

The Night Blooming Cereus


With wishes for fullness of life, nature, and friendship for all
 at this most potent of times.  

Thursday, July 13, 2023

O Taste and See


O Taste and See

by Denise Levertov


The world is not with us enough

O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, 
plum, quince,
living in the orchard 
and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

The Night Blooming Cereus
We go about the circles of our daily lives, the chores, the small dramas, the contentments and irritations, occasionally looking up to notice the colors of a brilliant sunset, or a dedicated parade of summer ants bearing purple petals to who knows where, or the delicious, sugared dark taste of the morning coffee, or the familiar cat, radiating pure love as she purrs in one's lap.  Occasionally we notice, sigh, perhaps say to ourselves "Nice".  Or "Wow".  Then back to the lists, the rising and falling of domestic or economic life.

Why does it often take an encounter with one's mortality to awake to the incredible, rich, gorgeous artistry of Life, all around us?  I suppose the answer to that is obvious.  But then....... there it is, and all one can do is stand, with mouth open, noticing, recognizing, "tasting and seeing".  


Lemons from my lemon tree


Just a week ago I spent three days in the ER at a local hospital to emerge with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure and an aneurism.  Now I wait another week to have open heart surgery.  An interim, a "liminal zone" of time in which I am awake.  All of this, all of this I've loved, and built, and collected, the garden I love,  the paintings I've done or imagine are yet to be done, the plans, the disappointments, the squabbles and the friendships, the cup I particularly like to drink tea out of, the sun coming through a yellow bottle I always notice...........it all could be over pretty soon  now.  Or not, but my perception of my "time" will not be the same, ever again.   What does one do with that kind of awakening.  Not a poetic or metaphysical abstraction, but carnal, immanent, solid?  Well,  gratitude helps.  And,...........

                                                                    O Taste and See

What a feast!  What if we daily understood (meaning, to "live under "a truth)  that it's such a Privilege to be here?  To experience and be a part of this amazing world with all of its polarities and struggles, among vast mysterious  communities of other Beings evolving in their own unique ways all around us?  And each moment with its own unique Beauty that blooms and dies and seeds, so fast, so precious, so amazing.  Collateral beauty, ackward beauty,  dark beauty that opens the heart and teaches the hard lessons too.  Who is the Conductor, who the orchestra?

For the past few years I've had the peculiar experience of having "life reviews" without the necessity of being dead. I think a lot of older people experience this.   In other words,  it's like long forgotten moments seem to arise from the well of my memory, often in ways that seem unrelated to whatever I am doing or even thinking about at the time.

I tend to feel those moments are part of the ineffable and  timeless gestalt that I really am, and they are worth looking at for what they may have to teach me now as I try to get an overview of the threads that weave the tapestry of my long life. 

Of  course, so many of those memory moments aren't happy, or illuminated, many are sad or painful or embarrousing or traumatic or show me the ways I may have hurt someone, been very unconscious, hurt myself, wasted time or love or purpose.   Those too are welcome now,  they are wise teachers in the unfolding of this grand adventure that has been (and is still, it's not over yet!) Lauren Raine.  I know, a strange post this, but I find myself in a state of awe.  It's a funny thing, but I find it strange that it would take heart disease to open my heart so.  May healing come to my heart, and may that vision that is with me now, remain.  I think of a line from a poem I wrote a long time ago, so here I quote myself:  

"We are given a vision so bountiful

we can only gaze with eyes wide,

like a child in summer's first garden.

Here is a poem by Rumi that also comes to mind today.  

The Guest-House 

This being human is a guest-house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you
out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

  


 


Wednesday, May 10, 2023

SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD

 

by Denise Levertov


We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

in and beside a world

devoid of our preoccupations, free

from apprehension—though affected,

certainly, by our actions.

A world parallel to our own though overlapping.


We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly

admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.


Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,

our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:


cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water home to Ocean, 

vast stillness of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, 

stuttering of fire to coal—then something tethered

in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, 

breaks free.


No one discovers

just where we’ve been, 

when we’re caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)


—but we have changed, a little.

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

The Minds of Trees...................

tall-trees-of-redwood-national-park by pierre-leclerc

I move among the ankles 
of forest Elders, tread
their moist rugs of moss,
duff of their soft brown carpets.
Far above, their arms are held
open wide to each other, or waving
what they know, what
perplexities and wisdoms they exchange,
unknown to me as were the thoughts

of grownups when in infancy I wandered
into a roofed clearing amidst
human feet and legs and the massive
carved legs of the table,
the minds of people, the minds of trees
equally remote, my attention then
filled with sensations, my attention now
caught by leaf and bark at eye level
and by thoughts of my own, but sometimes
drawn to upgazing-up and up: to wonder
about what rises so far above me into the light. 

Denise Levertov, From Below

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Mass of the Moon Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse, photo by Howard Brannen
The Lunar Eclipse going on today is extraordinary, and I just had to re-post this beautiful poem.  This is a cosmic event that could also be known as a Rite of Passage for many.  Denise Levertov imagined the Eclipse as not a phenonomena, but a Mass, a celestial event that moves us all in its orbit into the sacred. Blessed be.

MASS OF THE MOON ECLIPSE

Not more slowly than frayed
human attention can bear, but slow
enough to be stately, deliberate, a ritual
we can't be sure will indeed move
from death into resurrection.
As the bright silver inch by inch 
is diminished, options vanish,
life's allurements. The last silver
lies face down, back hunched, a husk.

But then, obscured, the whole sphere can be seen
to glow from behind its barrier shadow:  bronze,
unquenchable, blood-light.  And slowly,
more slowly than desolation overcame, overtook
the light, the light
is restored, outspread in a cloudless pasture of
spring darkness where firefly planes
fuss to and fro, and humans
turn off their brief attention
in secret relief.  No matter:  the rite
contains its power, whether or not
our witness rises toward it;
grandeur plays out the implacable drama
without even flicking aside our trivial
absence, the impatience with which we
fail to respond.

                And yet
we are spoken to, and sometimes 
we do stop, do, do give ourselves leave
to listen, to watch.  The moon,
the moon we do after all
love, is dying, are we to live
on a world without moon?  We swallow
a sour terror.  Then
that coppery sphere, no-moon become once more
full-moon, visible in absence.
And still without haste, silver
increment by silver
increment, the familiar, desired,
disregarded brilliance
is given again,

given and given.


Denise Levertov, "Mass of the Moon Eclipse"
from This Great Unknowing:  Last Poems
1999, New Directions Press

Monday, April 14, 2014

Eclipse of the Moon


Mass of the Moon Eclipse

Not more slowly than frayed
human attention can bear,
but slow enough to be stately, deliberate, a ritual
we can't be sure will indeed move
from death into resurrection.

As the bright silver inch by inch
is diminished, options vanish,
life's allurements. The last silver
lies face down, back hunched, a husk.

But then, obscured, the whole sphere can be seen
to glow from behind its barrier shadow:  bronze,
unquenchable, blood-light.  And slowly,
more slowly than desolation overcame, overtook
the light, the light


is restored, outspread in a cloudless pasture of
spring darkness where firefly planes
fuss to and fro, and humans
turn off their brief attention
in secret relief. 

No matter:  the rite
contains its power, whether or not
our witness rises toward it;
grandeur plays out the implacable drama
without even flicking aside our trivial
fail to respond.

And yet
we are spoken to, and sometimes
we do stop, do, do give ourselves leave
to listen, to watch.  The moon,
the moon we do after all
love, is dying, are we to live
on a world without moon?  We swallow
a sour terror.

Then
that coppery sphere,
no-moon become once more
full-moon, visible in absence.
And still without haste, silver
increment by silver
increment, the familiar, desired,
disregarded brilliance
 is given again,
given and given.



Denise Levertov
from This Great Unknowing:  Last Poems,
1999, New Directions Press

Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanks Giving


BRIDGIT

"God's abstention is only from human dialects;
the holy voice utters its woe and glory
in myriad musics, in signs and portents.
Our own words are for us to speak,
a way to ask and to answer."

Denise Levertov



There are some gifts that come to us
just once or twice in a lifetime
gifts that cannot be named
beyond the simple act of gratitude.

We are given a vision so bountiful
we can only gaze with eyes wide,
like a child
in summer's first garden.

We reach our clumsy hands
toward that communion
that single perfection
and walk away speechless, blessed.

And breathe,
in years to come, breathe,

breathe our hearts open
aching to tell it well:

to sing it into every other heart
to dance it down, into the hungry soil
to hold it before us

that light,
that grace given
voiceless light

(1999)