SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD
Denise Levertov
O Taste and See
by Denise LevertovThe world is not with us enoughO taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,meaning The Lord, meaningif anything all that livesto the imagination’s tongue,
grief, mercy, language,tangerine, weather, tobreathe them, bite,savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh ourdeaths, crossing the street,plum, quince,living in the orchardand being
hungry, and pluckingthe fruit.
The Night Blooming Cereus |
Lemons from my lemon tree |
"We are given a vision so bountifulwe can only gaze with eyes wide,
like a child in summer's first garden.
The Guest-House
This being human is a guest-house.Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comesas an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,who violently sweep your houseempty of its furniture,still, treat each guest honorably.He may be clearing youout 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 sentas a guide from beyond.
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.
tall-trees-of-redwood-national-park by pierre-leclerc |
Lunar Eclipse, photo by Howard Brannen |
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
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)