Sample Poems: Volume 23.1

Elegy for Denise Levertov
By Fran Quinn


"When you hear the voice

pause, you pause."
Clearly the sky is
overcast and the lamppost
is doing its best to hold it
up; the weight of heaven is
much too much for us. "Listen
again....

This pause is much longer and more

necessary than the first." A foot
hangs from the clouds, her foot,
recently risen there; with it
she is gone to do other
work, not the work we
see, but the work we
hear.

Being one less

we move on. We could wait
to see what will arrive
next, but when it arrives
it may not arrive here, because
she is gone, even the foot has
withdrawn.

But don't believe that

nothing's left; the lamppost
is there and the sky;
and, especially if we don't
fill it there is the
silence.

We have no way of measuring

that, so our job is to listen,
clearly listen. "The mountain will
say it to you through the
mist:

'Now that she is gone,

she has gone right
here,

heart.'"