Time is aeons / and we live in minutes, / flies on a windowpane. (Denise #Levertov, “Variations on a Theme by Rilke”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

Didmas, / neighbor in death, Golgotha dust / still streaked on the dried sweat of his body / no one had washed and anointed, is here, / for sequence is not known in Limbo; / the promise, given from cross to cross / at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn. (Denise #Levertov, “Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

Invisible hive, has it no small door / we could find if we stood / quite still and listened? (Denise #Levertov, “Dream 'Cello”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

"My hand on chiseled stone": A touch across the centuries in Denise Levertov's "The Past (II)". #111Words #DeniseLevertov #Levertov #CzesławMiłosz #RobertHaas #ThePastII #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/01/my-hand-on-chiseled-stone-touch-across.html

hope tried with a flutter of wings / to lift me (Denise #Levertov, “St. Thomas Didymus”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

My sock-monkey on the pillow, tail and limbs asprawl, / weary after a day of watching sunlight / prowl the house like a wolf. (Denise #Levertov, “Midnight Gladness”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

"The smooth hands of the village woman": A century and more in Denise Levertov's "Inheritance". #111Words #DeniseLevertov #Levertov #Poetry #Memory #Time #Inheritance #ADoorInTheHive https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-smooth-hands-of-village-woman.html

The mountain trembles in the dark lake, / its golden cliffs dipping / from almost-sunset light / deep into almost-evening waters. (Denise #Levertov, “Reflections”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

My hand on chiseled stone, fitting / into the invisible / print of the mason's own / where it lay / a moment of that year the nave / was still half-risen, roofless (Denise #Levertov, “The Past (II)”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

Where the stone steps / falter and come to an end / but the hillside rises / yet more steeply, / obtruded roots of the pines / have braided themselves / across the path to continue / the zigzag staircase. (Denise #Levertov, “A Calvary Path”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

Where the stone steps / falter and come to an end / but the hillside rises / yet more steeply, / obtruded roots of the pines / have braided themselves / across the path to continue / the zigzag staircase. (Denise #Levertov, “A Calvary Path”) #ADoorInTheHive

There were ramparts, buttresses, ancient fragments / bonded with newer masonry that was old too. (Denise #Levertov, “The Past”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

the gleam on distant spires / if after a downpour (Denise #Levertov, “The Open Sentence”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

It’s the wondering animals, ox and ass, unused / to human company after dark, who witness, // alone with Mary and Joseph, the birth (Denise #Levertov, “Nativity: An Altarpiece”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

Even in her nineties she recalled / the smooth hands of the village woman / who sometimes came from down the street / and gently, with the softest / of soft old flannel, / soaped and rinsed and dried / her grubby face (Denise #Levertov, “Inheritance”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

wings were needed, why should people / plod forever on foot, not glide like herons / through the blue and white / promise unfolding / over their heads, over / the river’s thawing? (Denise #Levertov, “Wings in the Pedlar’s Pack”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

The borderland — that's where, if one knew how, / one would establish residence. That watershed, / that spine, that looking-glass (Denise #Levertov, “The Life of Art”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

Who ever saw the mustard-plant, / wayside weed or tended crop, / grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful / of shade and nests and songs? (Denise #Levertov, “On the Parables of the Mustard Seed”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

The nearest leaves, outside the glass, / let through no light // but those beyond them / are so filled with ecstatic green / it brims over, cloud of brilliance, / hovering ocean (Denise #Levertov, “A Surrogate”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry

Old chimney bricks, dull red, / sometimes charred in a manner resembling / the way some painters shade / tone into deeper tone (Denise #Levertov, “Rearrangement”) #ADoorInTheHive #Poetry