Living For Two - Denise Levertov

Lily Bloom, what ominous fallen crowfeathers of shadow
the nightlight scattered around your outspread hair
on feverish cumulus of pillows—
demonic darkness, hair, feathers, jabs of greenish
sickroom light.
                        And your sallow face, long, lost, lonely,
O Lily Bloom, dying,
                        looked into mine those nights,
searching, equine, for life to be lived—
but not believing, Believing yourself fit for the knacker's yard...

What I told you—promised you—
though I meant it, didn't make sense:
Friendship, Life of Art, Love of Nature.
You had no correlatives, I had
no holiness.
You saved me the exact shame of not coming across. But Lily—
whom I remember not in my head (or barely once a year)
but in my nerves—what brimming measure of living
your death exacts from me! And when the fire of me smokes
or gasps as flames will do when a contending element
chokes their utterance, and they burn livid instead of red,

then I know I am cheating you. Living this half-life in my
                                                                              fiftieth year
cheats you. If I can't give you water, give myself
water, then I must give you, give myself, some icy spirits,
diamonds on the tongue,
                                        to sear cracked lips and
                                        quicken the heart: a ceremony

of living
Love, lovers, husband, child, land and ocean, struggle and solitude:
you've had these, and more, but you need more.

                                       We have other years
to go, Lily. I thrist too.
                                    We're not free
of our covenant, Enemy, Burden, Friend.



[From:
Levertov, D. (1975) The freeing of the dust. New York: New Directions, p57 - p58]



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