SHORT POEMS AND SPIN-OFFS: EMILY AND THE EXPERIENCE OF SURPRISE
by Denise Levertov
Page 11
And the last of the typescripts is a variation on a theme by Rilke, a theme which is in the first stanza of the first poem of the first part of Rilke's Book of Hours. It's not a translation but it's a variation on something that he did in that first stanza.
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 it 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.
I picked ones that seemed suitable to read at an Emily Dickinson celebration, for some obscure reason. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, except that they are all short, pretty short. This is another morning glory poem and it's called "Concurrence." This was in Candles in Babylon and it's in the section of that book called "Age of Terror."
Each day's terror almost
a form of boredom-madmen
at the wheel and
stepping on the gas and
the brakes no good-
and each day on,
sometimes two, morning-glories,
faultless, blue, blue sometimes
flecked with magenta, each
lit from within with
the first sunlight.
