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Denise Levertov - A Time Past
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The old wooden steps to the front door 
where I was sitting that fall morning 
when you came downstairs, just awake, 
and my joy at sight of you (emerging 
into golden day— 
the dew almost frost) 
pulled me to my feet to tell you 
how much I loved you: 


those wooden steps 
are gone now, decayed 
replaced with granite, 
hard, gray, and handsome. 
The old steps live 
only in me: 
my feet and thighs 
remember them, and my hands 
still feel their splinters. 


Everything else about and around that house 
brings memories of others—of marriage, 
of my son. And the steps do too: I recall 
sitting there with my friend and her little son who died, 
or was it the second one who lives and thrives? 
And sitting there ‘in my life,’ often, alone or with my husband. 
Yet that one instant, 
your cheerful, unafraid, youthful, ‘I love you too,’ 
the quiet broken by no bird, no cricket, gold leaves 
spinning in silence down without 
any breeze to blow them, 
is what twines itself 
in my head and body across those slabs of wood 
that were warm, ancient, and now 
wait somewhere to be burnt.
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