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Dreamed the thong of my sandal broke. Nothing to hold it to my foot. How shall I walk? Barefoot? The sharp stones, the dirt. I would hobble. And– Where was I going? Where was I going I can't go to now, unless hurting? Where am I standing, if I'm to stand still now?
"The Broken Sandal" by Denise Levertov, from Poems 1968-1972, copyright © 1970 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Well then, the last day the sharks appeared. Dark fins appear, innocent as if in fair warning. The sea becomes sinister, are they everywhere? I tell you, they break six feet of water. Isn't it the same sea, and won’t we play in it any more? I like it clear and not too calm, enough waves to fly in on. For the first time I dared to swim out of my depth. It was sundown when they came, the time when a sheen of copper still the sea, not dark enough for moonlight, clear enough to see them easily. Dark the sharp lift of the fins.
He had not looked,
pitiful man whom none
pity, whom all
must pity if they look
into their own face (given
only by glass, steel, water
barely known) all
who look up
to see-how many
faces? How many
seen in a lifetime? (Not those that flash by, but those
into which the gaze wanders
and is lost
and returns to tell
Here is a mystery,
a person, an
other, an I?
Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained—
unchained, and led
past the sleepers,
door after door silently opening—
out!
And along a long street's
majestic emptiness under the moon:
one hand on the angel's shoulder, one
feeling the air before him,
eyes open but fixed . . .
And not till he saw the angel had left him,
alone and free to resume
the ecstatic, dangerous, wearisome roads of
what he had still to do,
not till then did he recognize
this was no dream.