Denise Levertov

I still haven’t figured out where I heard about John Leax. Something Quid said made me think it might have been from a book I got awhile back called Of Earth and Sky: Spiritual Lessons from Nature. Compiled by Thomas Becknell, it is made up of poems and short essays showing how various themes such as justice, faith and prudence are modeled in nature. The book is filled with names I recognize and many I don’t, but no Leax.

One of the familiar names is Denise Levertov, a poet I’m positive Marion first told me about. After researching some of her books, I settled on The Stream & the Sapphire, a volume of selected poems on religious themes. Finding a couple of her poems in Of Earth and Sky was an added bonus.

Here are some of her poems for your enjoyment:

The Avowal

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.

~Denise Levertov

Adam's complaint

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.

~Denise Levertov

Celebration

Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.

Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,

deft hands. And every prodigy of green –

whether it's ferns or lichens or needles

or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –

greener than ever before. And the way the conifers

hold new cones to the light for the blessing,

a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind

transcribes for them!

A day that shines in the cold

like a first-prize brass band swinging along

the street

of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds

with the claims of reasonable gloom.

~Denise Levertov