Denise Levertov: "Looking, Walking, Being"

"The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in."

-- Mark Rudman

I look and look.
Looking's a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch

fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That's
a way of breathing,

breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.

"Looking, Walking, Being" by Denise Levertov, from Sands of the Well. © New Directions Publishing, 1996.

Image credit: "The Eyes of Senna," oil painting by Bruni Sabian, 2008 (originally color).