Quote #12

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 flamed up to the crown of me. I was seed again. I was fern in the swamp. I was coal.

More from Denise Levertov

  1. He told of journeys, of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark, of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day deeper than roo…
  2. And I in terror but not in doubt of what I must do in anguish, in haste, wrenched from the earth root after root, the soil heaving and crac…
  3. Then as he sang it was no longer sounds only that made the music: he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language came into my ro…
  4. The music reached us. Clumsily, stumbling over our own roots, rustling our leaves in answer, we moved, we followed.
  5. I was the first to see him, for I grew out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest. He was a man, it seemed. . .
  6. By dawn he was gone. We have stood here since, in our new life. We have waited. He does not return.
  7. I love them for finding what I can't find, and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that a thousand times, till dea…
  8. It is said he made his earth-journey, and lost what he sought. It is said they felled him and cut up his limbs for firewood. And it is said…

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