Of Being

by Denise Levertov

I know this happiness
is provisional:
the looming presences—
great suffering, great fear—

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:
but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:
this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:
this need to dance,
this need to kneel:
this mystery:

-Read at St. Lydia’s on November 11, 2012