Three Poems by Denise Levertov
PN Review 46, November - December 1985
THE GAZE SALUTES LYONEL FEININGER WHILE CROSSING THE NEW JERSEY WASTELANDS
A certain delicacy in the desolation:
olive-green the polluted
stretches of grass and weeds, the small
meres and sloughs dark with the darkness
of smoked glass,
gray air at intervals slashed with
rust-red uprights,
cranes or derricks;
and at the horizon line,
otherwise indeterminate,
a spidery definition of viaducts and
arched bridges,
pale but clear in silverpoint.
OF GODS
God gave the earth-gods
adamantine ignorance.
They think themselves
the spontaneous shimmering of fact —
brilliant wings with no history
of cramped egg or stifling cocoon.
Therein lies their power.
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ST PETER AND THE ANGEL
Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained —
unchained, and led
past the sleepers,
door after door silently opening —
out!
And along a long street's
majestic emptiness under the moon:
one hand on the angel's shoulder, one
feeling the air before him,
eyes open but fixed . . .
And not till he saw the angel had left him,
alone and free to resume
the ecstatic, dangerous, wearisome roads of
what he had still to do,
not till then did he recognize
this was no dream. More frightening
than arrest, than being chained to his warders:
he could hear his own footsteps suddenly.
Had the angel's feet
made any sound? He could not recall.
No one had missed him, no one was in pursuit.
He himself must be
the key, now, to the next door,
the next terrors of freedom and joy.
These poems by Denise Levertov are taken from PN Review 46, November - December 1985 and were subsequently published in Oblique Prayers, Bloodaxe Books, 1985.