Thursday, August 20, 2015

Denise Levertov: "The Love of Morning"
























It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we’ve lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror. . . .

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight’s gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

but on gray mornings,
all incident—our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth’s
belovéd dust, leading the way—all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.



"The Love of Morning" by Denise Levertov. Text as published in Selected Poems, edited by Paul Lacey (New Directions, 2002). 

Art credit: "Footprints in the sand create a classic picture" [Thar Desert, India/Pakistan], photograph by Mark Moxon.



1 comment :

  1. Very potent. Levertov has captured it, I think: both the vivifying effect of birdsong and the stultifying effect of gray mornings.

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