Looking, Walking, Being, I look and look. Looking's a way of being: one becomes, sometimes, a pair of eyes walking. Walking wherever looking takes one. The eyes dig and burrow into the world. They touch, fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor. World and the past of it, not only visible present, solid and shadow that looks at one looking. And language? Rhythms of echo and interruption? That's a way of breathing. breathing to sustain looking, walking and looking, through the world, in it.
Denise LevertovBut for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
Denise LevertovI thought I was growing wingsโ it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fireโ it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirrorโno longer young, the newsโalways of death, the dogsโrising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling.... ("Seeing For a Moment")
Denise LevertovIf woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.
Denise LevertovIt's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.
Denise LevertovProphetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.
Denise Levertov