Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Carapace
I am growing mine
though I have regretted yours.
She says, ‘Sure I saw him: he wanted_
to run, the Guardia Civil_
shot him before he reached the patio wall._
Do I understand “subversive”? Yes,_
the word means_
people who know their rights,_
if they work but don’t get enough to eat_
they protest. He was_
a lay preacher, my father,_
he preached the Gospel,_
he was subversive.’_
She is 12._
My shell is growing
nicely, not very hard, just
a thin protection but it’s
better than just skin. Have you
completed yours? It seems
there will be chinks in it though,
the cartilaginous
plates don’t quite meet, do yours?
A 9 year old boy whose father has ‘disappeared’ three weeks now,
asked how he feels, says
with the shrug of a man of sixty,
‘sad.’ He nods. ‘Yes; sad…’_
That burning, blistering glare
off the world’s desert
still pushes in; oh, filter it, grow faster,
hide me in shadow,
my carapace!
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) was the author of twenty-three collections of poetry as well as four books of prose and three translations of poetry. She continued composing poetry while battling leukemia, and The Great Unknowing: Last Poems (New Directions, 2000) was published posthumously.