The Stream & the Sapphire by Denise Levertov

Author:Denise Levertov [Levertov, Denise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811222402
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2012-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

The Showings: Lady Julian of Norwich, 1342–1416

1

Julian, there are vast gaps we call black holes,

unable to picture what’s both dense and vacant;

and there’s the dizzying multiplication of all

language can name or fail to name, unutterable

swarming of molecules. All Pascal

imagined he could not stretch his mind to imagine

is known to exceed his dread.

And there’s the earth of our daily history,

its memories, its present filled with the grain

of one particular scrap of carpentered wood we happen

to be next to, its waking light on one especial leaf,

this word or that, a tune in this key not another,

beat of our hearts now, good or bad,

dying or being born, eroded, vanishing—

And you ask us to turn our gaze

inside Out, and see

a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, and believe

it is our world? Ask us to see it lying

in God’s pierced palm? That it encompasses

every awareness our minds contain? All Time?

All limitless space given form in this

medieval enigma?

Yes, this is indeed

what you ask, sharing

the mystery you were shown: all that is made:

a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, held safe

in God’s pierced palm.

2

What she petitioned for was never

instead of something else.

Thirty was older than it is now. She had not married

but was no starveling; if she had loved,

she had been loved. Death or some other destiny

bore him away, death or some other bride

changed him. Whatever that story,

long since she had travelled

through and beyond it. Somehow,

reading or read to, she’d spiralled

up within tall towers

of learning, steeples of discourse.

Bells in her spirit

rang new changes.

Swept beyond event, one longing

outstripped all others: that reality,

supreme reality,

be witnessed. To desire wounds—

three, no less, no more—

is audacity, not, five centuries early, neurosis;

it’s the desire to enact metaphor, for flesh to make known

to intellect (as uttered song

makes known to voice,

as image to eye)

make known in bone and breath

(and not die) God’s agony.

3

‘To understand her, you must imagine…’

A childhood, then;

the dairy’s bowls of clabber, of rich cream,

ghost-white in shade, and outside

the midsummer gold, humming of dandelions.

To run back and forth, into the chill again,

the sweat of slate, a cake of butter

set on a green leaf—out once more

over slab of stone into hot light, hot

wood, the swinging gate!

A spire we think ancient split the blue

between two trees, a half-century old —

she thought it ancient.

Her father’s hall, her mother’s bower,

nothing was dull. The cuckoo

was changing its tune. In the church

there was glass in the windows, glass

colored like the world. You could see

Christ and his mother and his cross,

you could see his blood, and the throne of God.

In the fields

calves were lowing, the shepherd was taking the sheep

to new pasture.

Julian perhaps

not yet her name, this child’s

that vivid woman.

4

God’s wounded hand

reached out to place in hers

the entire world, ‘round as a ball,

small as a hazelnut.’ Just so one day

of infant light remembered

her mother might have given

into her two cupped palms

a newlaid egg, warm from the hen;

just so her brother

risked to her solemn joy

his delicate treasure,

a sparrow’s egg from the hedgerow.

What can this be? the eye of her understanding marveled.

God for a moment in our history

placed in that

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.