Denise Levertov / Listening to Distant Guns

Listening to Distant Guns

by Denise Levertov

BIOGRAPHY


The roses tremble; oh the sunflower's eye
Is opened wide in sad expectancy.
Westward and back the circling swallows fly, 
The rooks' battalions dwindle near the hill.

That low pulsation in the east is war:
No bell now breaks the evening's silent dream.
The bloodless clarity of the evening's sky
Betrays no whisper of the battle-scream.

1940

Early Poems