The Rav <br />of Northern White Russia declined, <br />in his youth, to learn the <br />language of birds, because <br />the extraneous did not interest him; nevertheless <br />when he grew old it was found <br />he understood them anyway, having <br />listened well, and as it is said, 'prayed <br /> with the bench and the floor.' He used <br />what was at hand--as did <br />Angel Jones of Mold, whose meditations <br />were sewn into coats and britches. <br /> Well, I would like to make, <br />thinking some line still taut between me and them, <br />poems direct as what the birds said, <br />hard as a floor, sound as a bench, <br />mysterious as the silence when the tailor <br />would pause with his needle in the air.<br /><br />Denise Levertov<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/illustrious-ancestors/
