Friday, April 6, 2012

Still in love with Levertov...

This is a simple, straightforward poem about having friends who are far away...

Complaint and Rejoinder

There's a kind of despair, when your friends
are scattered across the world; you see
how therefore never is there a way
each can envision truly
the others of whom you speak.
                    Oceans divide your life,
you want to place all of it -
people, places, their tones, atmospheres,
everything shared uniquely with each -
into a single bowl, like petals, like sand
in a pail. No one can ever hear or tell
the whole story.

(And do you really think
this would not be so if you lived
all of your life on an island,
in a village too small to contain
a single stranger?)

- Denise Levertov

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