When We Look Up
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?
Credit
"When We Look Up" by Denise Levertov, from Poems: 1960-1967, copyright © 1966 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Date Published
01/01/1966