Quote #8

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 death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all.

More from Denise Levertov

  1. Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I who don't know the secret wrote the line.
  2. I was the first to see him, for I grew out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest. He was a man, it seemed. . .
  3. The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
  4. 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…
  5. I like the juicy stem of grass that grows within the coarser leaf folded round, and the butteryellow glow in the narrow flute from which th…
  6. 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…
  7. I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
  8. 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…

All Denise Levertov quotes