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Ringrazio Simon James Terzo per aver riproposto questo mio post 🙏💙🙏 Luisa Zambrotta – The secret / Il segreto di Denise Levertov

#discovery #Epiphany #influences #Levertov #poem #Reading #reblog #secret

We who are alive must make clear, as she could not, the distinction between creativity and self-destruction.

-Denise Levertov, in Anne Sexton's obituary

#quotes #levertov #anne sexton

The Secret

Two girls discoverthe secret of lifein a sudden line ofpoetry. I who don’t know thesecret wrotethe line. Theytold me (through a third person)they had found itbut not what it wasnot even what line it was. No doubtby now, more than a weeklater, they have forgottenthe secret, the line, the name ofthe poem. I love themfor finding whatI can’t find, and for loving mefor the line I wrote,and for…

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#discovery #Epiphany #influences #Levertov #poetry #Reading #secret

the secret

Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I who don’t know the secret wrote the line. They told me (through a third person) they had found it but not what it was not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. 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.

Denise Levertov

#thesecret #levertov #deniselevertov

#levertov

When she cannot be sure which of two lovers it was with whom she felt this or that moment of pleasure, of something fiery streaking from head to heels, the way the white flame of a cascade streaks a mountainside seen from a car across a valley, the car changing gear, skirting a precipice, climbing… When she can sit or walk for hours after a movie talking earnestly and with bursts of laughter with friends, without worrying that it’s late, dinner at midnight, her time spent without counting the change… When half her bed is covered with books and no one is kept awake by the reading light and she disconnects the phone, to sleep till noon… Then self-pity dries up, a joy untainted by guilt lifts her. She has fears, but not about loneliness; fears about how to deal with the aging of her body—how to deal with photographs and the mirror. She feels so much younger and more beautiful than the looks. At her happiest —or even in the midst of some less than joyful hour, sweating patiently through a heatwave in the city or hearing the sparrows at daybreak, dully gray, toneless, the sound of fatigue— a kind of sober euphoria makes her believe in her future as an old woman, a wanderer seamed and brown, little luxuries of the middle of life all gone, watching cities and rivers, people and mountains, without being watched; not grim nor sad, an old winedrinking woman, who knows the old roads, grass-grown, and laughs to herself… She knows it can’t be: that’s Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby from The Water Babies, no one can walk the world any more, a world of fumes and decibels. But she thinks maybe she could get to be tough and wise, some way, anyway. Now at least she is past the time of mourning, now she can say without shame or deceit, O blessed Solitude.

Denise Levertov, A Woman Alone

#levertov