Writing in the Dark

"It's not that difficult.
Anyway, it's necessary.

Wait till morning, and you'll forget.
And who knows if morning will come.

Fumble for the light,
and you'll be
stark awake, but the vision
will be fading, slipping
out of reach.

You must have paper at hand,
a felt-tip pen, ballpoints don't always flow,
pencil points tend to break. There's nothing
shameful in that much prudence; those are our tools.

Never mind about crossing your t's, dotting your i's-
but take care not to cover
one word with the next. Practice will reveal
how one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the other
to keep each line
clear of the next.

Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from the depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices,

or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:

words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again."

- Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov

I am reading with great enjoyment a book by Denise Levertov called, "This Great Unknowing: Last Poems", a compilation of her last forty poems. Here is one of my favorites:

Patience

"What patience a landscape has, like an old horse,
head down in its field.
Grey days,
air and fine rain cling, become one, hovering till at last,
languidly, rain relinquishes that embrace, consents
to fall. What patience a hill, a plain,
a band of woodland holding still, have, and the slow falling
of grey rain... Is it blind faith? Is it
merely a way to deeply rest? Is the horse
only resigned,or has it
some desireable knowledge, an enclosed meadow
quite other than its sodden field,
which patience is the key to? Has it already,
within itself, entered that sunwarmed shelter?"

There is a powerful sense of quietness about her poems. Levertov is a fine poet.
I can't resist adding a few other lovely portions:

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."


from Immersion:

"There is anger abroad in the world, a numb thunder,
because of God's silence: But how naive,
to keep wanting words we could speak ourselves...
God's abstention is only from human dialects. The holy voice
utters its woe and glory in myriad musics, in signs and portents.
Our own words are for us to speak, a way to ask and to answer."


from Noblesse Oblige

"(Meanwhile,
the April sun, cold though it is,
has opened the small daisies,
so many and so humble they get underfoot-
and don't care. Each one
a form of laughter.)


from Translucence

"This great unknowing
is part of their holiness. They are always trying
to share out joy as if it were cake or water,
something ordinary, not rare at all."