113 Quotes by Denise Levertov

The ache of marriage:thigh and tongue, beloved,are heavy with it,it throbs in the teethWe look for communionand are turned away, beloved,each and eachIt is leviathan and wein its bellylooking for joy, some joynot to be known outside ittwo by two in the ark ofthe ache of it.

Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.

And on our lips the blood of berries before we kiss,

Night is breathing close to us, dark, soft.

To speak of sorrowworks upon it moves it from itscrouched place barringthe way to and from the soul's hall.

I witnessedall things quicken to color, to formmy questionnot answered but givenits partin a vast unfolding design litby a rising sun.

Fire he sang,that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer. As though his lyre (now I knew its name) were both frost and fire, its chords flamedup to the crown of me. I was seed again. I was fern in the swamp. I was coal. ("A Tree Telling of Orpheus")

we are so many and many within themselves travel to far islands but no one asks for their story....

The vast silence of Buddha overtakes and overrules the oncoming roar of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues; it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.