Wednesday March 12
“Conversation in Moscow” is one of Denise Levertov’s longer poems (c. 8 pages). It is an account of a conversation at a teashop or a bar in Moscow: a scientist, a political analyst, a poet, Denise Levertov and the women who translates for all of them. The final lines move me deeply and remind me of the beauty and depth of the human condition: “The Poet never must lose despair.”
What offers us adults the resources to live our commitments with courage and grace? Try reading these lines out loud.
john sj
p.s. As I finish writing this post, it looks like a wild and windy snow storm. One good thing about a big snow storm this late is that it usually warms up and melts before very long.
And the poet–it’s midnight, the room is half empty, soon we must part–
the poet, his presence
ursine and kind, shifting his weight in a chair too small for him,
quietly says, and shyly:
“The Poet
never must lose despair.”
Then our eyes indeed
meet and hold,
All of us know, smiling
in common knowledge–
even the palest spirit among us, burdened
as he is with weight of abstractions–
all of us know he means
we mustn’t, any of us, lose touch with the source,
pretend it’s not there, cover over
the mineshaft of passion
despair somberly tolls its bell
from the depths of,
and wildest joy
sings out of too,
flashing
the scales of its laughing, improbable music,
grief and delight entwined in the dark down there.
from Denise Levertov, “Conversation in Moscow” in Freeing of the Dust