Denise Levertov

Here you will find thePoemThe Garden Wallof poet Denise Levertov

The Garden Wall

Bricks of the wall, so much older than the house - taken I think from a farm pulled down when the street was built - narrow bricks of another century. Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets, a wall behind the flowers - roses and hollyhocks, the silver pods of lupine, sweet-tasting phlox, gray lavender - unnoticed - but I discovered the colors in the wall that woke when spray from the hose played on its pocks and warts - a hazy red, a grain gold, a mauve of small shadows, sprung from the quiet dry brown - archetype of the world always a step beyond the world, that can't be looked for, only as the eye wanders, found.