PoemThe Mutes
Author / PoetDenise Levertov
TagsFemale, Grief-Language, Groans, Tribute

Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of the subway

to tell her she is a female
and their flesh knows it,

are they a sort of tune,
an ugly enough song, sung
by a bird with a slit tongue

but meant for music?

Or are they the muffled roaring
of deafmutes trapped in a building that is
slowly filling with smoke?

Perhaps both.

Such men most often
look as if groan were all they could do,
yet a woman, in spite of herself,

knows it’s a tribute:
if she were lacking all grace
they’d pass her in silence:

so it’s not only to say she’s
a warm hole. It’s a word

in grief-language, nothing to do with
primitive, not an ur-language;
language stricken, sickened, cast down

in decrepitude. She wants to
throw the tribute away, dis-
gusted, and can’t,

it goes on buzzing in her ear,
it changes the pace of her walk,
the torn posters in echoing corridors

spell it out, it
quakes and gnashes as the train comes in.
Her pulse sullenly

had picked up speed,
but the cars slow down and
jar to a stop while her understanding

keeps on translating:
‘Life after life after life goes by

without poetry,
without seemliness,
without love.’

Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
24 Oct 1923 - 20 Dec 1997
Region: Central America
Period: Contemporary
Movement: Confessional, New American Poetry
Awards: National Book Award, The Robert Frost Medal

more poems by Denise Levertov

Poem NameTopic
In MindContrast, Imagination, Innocence
Wedding-RingDivorce, Loss, Memory
The WellDreaming, Moonlight, Transformation
The ThreadGently, Pulling, Silently
The QuestDream, Love, Pursuit
The BreathingFog, Nature, Patience
The AvowalEmbrace, Float, Freefall
The Ache Of MarriageCommunion, Joy, Leviathan
Seeing For A MomentCocoon, Eschatology, Wings
Sojourns In The Parallel WorldConnection, Nature, Transformation

all poems by Denise Levertov

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