poetry

I was introduced to Denise Levertov as a junior at the University of Washington, in a poetry class of seven people and a young, arrogant professor who nonetheless respected my interpretations as the only known Christian in the class. I remember reading Evening Train as I walked down The Ave at lunchtime, in the rain. I sat in coffee shops and marked it up with pencil. She was a woman, she was a Seattleite, she was a Christian. Her poems were a honeycomb to an aspiring writer. I wrote what I then considered to be my best college paper on this woman who had passed away the previous December. It is buried now on some floppy disk in an old backpack at the bottom of a box in my parents' basement, perhaps. But the poems still strike my heart:

Variation on a Theme by Rilke

A certain day became a presence to me;

there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:

a being. And before it started to descend

from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with

the flat of a sword, granting me

honor and a task. The day's blow

rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.