“Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened”
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
came into my roots
out of the earth,
into my bark
out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
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Denise Levertov 49
Poet 1923–1997Related quotes

“Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.”
A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

“Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music.”
Two Interviews (1985), ISBN 0714528293
Maeve Gilmore (his widow), Introduction to A Book of Nonsense, p. 10