Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov [Poetry Society of America]

from Denise Levertov’s The Great Unknowing:

Memory demands so much

Memory demands so much,

it wants every fiber

told and retold.

                          It gives and gives

but for a price, making you

risk drudgery, lapse

into document, treacheries

of glaring noon and a slow march.

Leaf never before

seen or envisioned, flying spider

of rose-red autumn, playing

a lone current of undecided wind,

lift me with you, take me

off this ground of memory that clings

to my feet like thick clay,

exacting gratitude for gifts and gifts.

Take me flying before

you vanish, leaf, before

I have time to remember you,

intent instead on being

in the midst of that flight,

of those unforeseeable words.


Once Only

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every initiation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
               did happen in our lives, our stories
               are not drab with its absence: but don't
expect now to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.