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Denise Levertov - Illustrious Ancestors
Work rating: Low

The Rav
of Northern White Russia declined,
in his youth, to learn the
language of birds, because
the extraneous did not interest him; nevertheless
when he grew old it was found
he understood them anyway, having
listened well, and as it is said, `prayed
          with the bench and the floor.` He used
what was at hand—as did
Angel Jones of Mold, whose meditations
were sewn into coats and britches.
          Well, I would like to make,
thinking some line still taut between me and them,
poems direct as what the birds said,
hard as a floor, sound as a bench,
mysterious as the silence when the tailor
would pause with his needle in the air.
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