On This Thanksgiving Day

Poetry on Gratitude
Denise Levertov:
That Passeth All Understanding - Oblique Prayers
New Directions, New York, 1984, p. 85

 An awe so quiet
I don't know when it began.

A gratitude
had begun
to sing in me.

Was there
some moment
dividing
song from no song?

When does dewfall begin?

When does night
fold its arms over our hearts
to cherish them?

When is daybreak?

Praise Wet Snow Falling Early - 
  - New Directions, New York
(1995)

 Praise 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.

On This Day

O Taste and See

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.


Denise Levertov was born in 1923 in suburban London. Her father, an Anglican priest, had grown up and been educated in the Hassidic tradition. Her mother was Welsh. Levertov began writing at a young age; she sent some of her poems to T.S. Eliot when she was just 12 years old--and received a letter of encouragement in reply. She moved to the US in 1947 and became a citizen in 1955. She was greatly influenced by the Black Mountain poets. Levertov became Christian in 1984, converting to Roman Catholicism in 1989. She died in 1997.

I still have the original copy of my senior year high school English paper, a critique of O Taste and See, my favorite of all the poems by Denise Levertov. Many more of her poems may be found here.
Photo of Denise Levertov by The Luce Studio, courtesy of New Directions.

A POEM FOR SPRING, 2009

On this second day of Spring, 2009, I offer a poem written by my most favourite 20th century poet, Denise Levertov, whom I discovered when I was in high school.

Beginners

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea—“

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.

How can desire fail?
—we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

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.