Improv, Week 8

Poem: “Clouds” by Denise Levertov

The clouds as I see them, rising
urgently, roseate in the
mounting of somber power

surging in evening haste over
roofs and hermetic
grim walls—

Last night
As if death had lit a pale light
in your flesh, your flesh
was cold to my touch, or not cold
but cool, cooling, as if the last traces
of warmth were still fading in you.
My thigh burned in cold fear where
yours touched it.

But I forced to mind my vision of a sky
close and enclosed, unlike the space in which these clouds move—
a sky of gray mist it appeared—
and how looking intently at it we saw
its gray was not gray but a milky white
in which radiant traces of opal greens,
fiery blues, gleamed, faded, gleamed again,
and how only then, seeing the color in the gray,
a field sprang into sight, extending
between where we stood and the horizon,

a field of freshest deep spiring grass
starred with dandelions,
green and gold
gold and green alternating in closewoven
chords, madrigal field.

Is death’s chill that visited our bed
other than what it seemed, is it
a gray to be watched keenly?

Wiping my glasses and leaning westward,
clearing my mind of the day’s mist and leaning
into myself to see
the colors of truth

I watch the clouds as I see them
in pomp advancing, pursuing
the fallen sun.

Revision:

Seattle fog, the only marriage between the leavings
of the city and clouds who have fallen, are always
gray with a tinge of brown. It condenses on our skin
as we walk from the Saturday house play; Antigone
would never face such a dense wall as we headed
to our lighted apartment as if walking through death’s
dinner party. We were his guests it seems as I clung to the arm
of your Armani suit, our lungs breathing in what could
have been exhaust or the sky, depending on how you
look at it. Looking up from the balcony, I see a lone
mist barely formed across the cuticle of a moon, wipe
my glasses to hide the shiver from your cool touch. What
is there to fear as you turned to sip from your glass of bourbon?
When I was ten, the night sky was never so allusive nor fearful
as I squinted to find the stars of my youth that barely clung
to the night sky. Turning then, I knew as if always knowing
that our deathbed tucked in so tightly could not bring back
what I had seen, the naivety of the unknowing would
hover over us as we dreamed of nothing, nothing at all.