V E R S E and I M A G E

[with 3 poems by Denise Levertov]

. . . Who can utter the poignance of all that is constantly threatened . . .

Toward the end of March Amelia and I explored the vernal pool near Dutchman Creek and discovered frog eggs with hundreds of newly hatched tadpoles. We visited a couple more times to watch them grow (no legs yet!). Week before last I was walking along the creek on my own and decided to check their progress.

I edged through the muck and grass, taller now, leaned over the little pool, and counted all the tadpoles. There were exactly zero. None. Well, I did scare off a few big second-year tads, but all of the little black wigglers were gone.

I stared a long time. Plenty of water. A little algae, weeds and water plants. Maybe they were all hiding under leaves. I leaned all the way down. What is that in the water there, arc of a cylinder covered with hieroglyphics, almost stepped on it? I poked with my stick and a 3-foot long Northern Water Snake shot sinusoidal through the water then veered back towards me and disappeared into a hole, I guess, because I never could spot it again.

Hungry snake, OK, gotta eat, but did you have to finish off every one? Isn’t there some sort of ecological balance that guarantees next year’s balmy spring evenings on the porch listening to peepers, tree frogs, and the long mellifluous trill of the American toad? I guess the older, bigger tads were experienced, too wily to be caught, better at hiding themselves in the silt, so maybe a few will indeed live to sing. I don’t think I’ll be telling Amelia about the snake any time soon, though.

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This afternoon I walk down to the creek to see what’s become of the pool after a two-week dry spell. One year it dried up altogether. Still plenty of muck; grass and weeds even higher. The pool has shrunk but as I thread my way closer there are two big plops and a swirl of silt slowly settling. And there they are: brand new, a couple of hundred little black tadpole wigglers, freshly hatched.

More life, says Nature. More, please.

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Three poems by Denise Levertov

bring the planet / into the haven it is to be known

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Web

+++++Intricate and untraceable
+++++weaving and interweaving,
+++++dark strand with light:

+++++designed, beyond
+++++all spiderly contrivance,
+++++to link, not to entrap:

elation, grief, joy, contrition, entwined:
shaking, changing,
++++++++++forever
+++++++++++++++forming,
++++++++++++++++++++transforming:

all praise,
+++++all praise to the
+++++++++++++++great web.

– Denise Levertov

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In California: Morning, Evening, Late January

Pale, the enkindled,
light
advancing,
emblazoning
summits of palm and pine,

the dew
lingering,
scripture of
scintillas.

Soon the roar
of mowers
cropping the already short
grass of lawns,

men with long-nozzled
cylinders of pesticide
poking at weeds,
at moss in cracks of cement,

and louder roar
of helicopters off to spray
vineyards where braceros try
to hold their breath,

and in the distance, bulldozers, excavators,
babel of destructive construction.

Banded by deep
oakshadow, airy
shadow of eucalyptus,

miner’s lettuce,
tender, untasted,
and other grass, unmown,
luxuriant,
no green more brilliant.

Fragile paradise.

. . . .

At day’s end the whole sky,
vast unstinting, flooded with transparent
mauve,
tint of wisteria,
cloudless
over the malls, the industrial parks.

the homes with the lights going on,
the homeless arranging their bundles.

. . . .

Who can utter
the poignance of all that is constantly
threatened, invaded, expended

and constantly
nevertheless
persists in beauty,

tranquil as this young moon
just risen and slowly
drinking light
from the vanished sun.

Who can utter
the praise of such generosity
or the shame?

– Denise Levertov

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Tragic Error

The earth is the Lord’s, we gabbled,
and the fullness thereof –
while we looted and pillaged, claiming indemnity:
the fullness thereof
given over to us, to our use –
while we preened ourselves, sure of our power,
wilful or ignorant, through the centuries

Miswritten, misread, that charge:
subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.
Surely we were to have been
earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.
Surely our task
was to have been
to love the earth,
to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden.

That wold have been our dominion:
to be those cells of earth’s body that could
perceive and imagine, could bring the planet
into the haven it is to be known,
(as the eye blesses the hand, perceiving
its form and the work it can do).

– Denise Levertov

all selections are from The Life Around Us, selected poems on nature, by Denise Levertov, New Directions Books, 1997

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Denise Levertov (1923-1997) was a naturalized American poet born in England. Her first book of poetry was published shortly after World War II; she moved to the U.S. in 1948 and became influenced by the Black Mountain Poets and William Carlos Williams such that her writing ultimately came to express a uniquely American voice with a world vision. Her poems are often strongly ecological and political. She writes in the forward to The Life Around Us: As I have quite frequently found myself obliged to skip back and forth from book to book when reading to audiences composed of people whose work and vocation was in ecology, conservation, and restoration, it was suggested that I put together a selection of thematically relevant poems, which would be useful not only to the many earth-science people who, I have found, do love poetry, but also to the general public.

Poetry Foundation
Academy of American Poets
Works by Denise Levertov
Chronology of Denise Levertov’s life

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Header Artwork © Linda French Griffin

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