Quote of the Day (Poet Denise Levertov, With Thoughts in a Garden)

“In a garden grene whenas I lay—

you set the words to a tune so plaintive
it plucks its way through my life as through a wood.

As through a wood, shadows and light between birches,
gliding a moment in open glades, hidden by thickets of holly
your life winds in me.” — British-born American poet and Roman Catholic convert Denise Levertov (1923-1997), “Olga Poems,” in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, edited by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey (2013)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Denise Levertov, on Martyrs Bearing Witness in 1980s El Salvador)

“The pain, the murders,

the hunger, the tortures,

all continued,

and continue still, and increase—

“yet the voices that tell us

our broken bodies are not after all

worthless rubbish, but hold

sparks of the God--

these voices

begin to give us our freedom.”-- British-born American poet and Roman Catholic convert Denise Levertov (1923–97), “El Salvador: Requiem and Invocation (A Libretto),” in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, edited by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey (2013)

In the later half of her illustrious career as a poet, Denise Levertov became increasingly involved with urgent issues such as nuclear arms, the Vietnam War and American policy towards Central America. In the case of the latter, she used her verses to underscore the horrendous impact of U.S. military aid to El Salvador—and how Roman Catholic priests and nuns bore witness to the plight of the poor.

Throughout the 1980s, as civil war raged between the government-supported military and a coalition of guerrilla groups known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the Reagan and Bush administrations extended the conflict through aid to the government, which they saw as a bulwark against Communism. 

During the height of the war, American financial and military aid averaged $1.5 million a day. All the while, Salvadoran military-sponsored death squads targeted proponents of political and economic reform.

Levertov’s poem commemorates the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero, three American nuns and a lay sister murdered in the early 1980s. Three and a half decades after its composition—and 29 years after the end of the civil war—El Salvador continues to wrestle with the fallout from the conflict. 

This past week, Inocente Orlando Montano, a former colonel with the Salvadoran military, was accused of planning the murder of six priests in 1989. The massacre aimed to prevent peace talks. The martyrdom of the priests, as Levertov wrote, continued to remind the poor that they hold “sparks of the God.”

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Denise Levertov, on How ‘God's in the Wilderness’)

“No, God's in the wilderness next door

— that huge tundra room, no walls and a sky roof —

busy at the loom. Among the berry bushes,

rain or shine, that loud clacking and whirring.

irregular but continuous;

God is absorbed in work, and hears

the spacious hum of bees, not the din,

and hears far-off

our screams. Perhaps

listens for prayers in that wild solitude.”—British-born American poet, feminist, political activist—and Catholic convert--Denise Levertov (1923-1997), “The Task,” in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, edited by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey (2013)

Quote of the Day (Denise Levertov, on ‘Creator Spirit’s Deep Embrace’)

“As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.”-- Denise Levertov, “The Avowal,” from The Selected Poems of Denise Levertov, edited by Paul A. Lacey (2002)

Two days ago would have marked the 90^th birthday of British-born American poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997), who could range from public commentary (fiercely anti-Vietnam War verse) to intimate ruminations—not just between lovers, but between the individual and God, as here.