On October 24, 2007, we will honor Denise Levertov as the posthumous Pat Farren Lecture honoree in a benefit for Peacework. This selection is the title poem of a 1982 book and appears in her Selected Poems edited by Paul Lacey. Published courtesy of New Directions Publishing Corporation; © all rights reserved.
Through the midnight streets of Babylon
between the steel towers of their arsenals,
between the torture castles with no windows,
we race by barefoot, holding tight
our candles, trying to shield
the shivering flames, crying
'Sleepers Awake!'
hoping
the rhyme's promise was true,
that we may return
from this place of terror
home to a calm dawn and
the work we had just begun
Links:
[1] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/forward/835
[2] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/print/835
[3] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/authors/denise-levertov
[4] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/issue-379-october-2007
[5] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/geography/universal
[6] http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/category/8-creative-expression-and-reviews-art-music-literature/8-05-poetry
[7] http://www.afsc.org/store