Once a woman went into the woods.
The birds were silent. Why? she said.
Thunder, they told her,

Like dogs in Mexico,
furless, sore, misshapen,

arrives from laborious nowhere

Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of the subway

Grief, have I denied thee?
Grief, I have denied thee.

That robe or tunic, black gauze

Your beauty, which I lost sight of once
for a long time, is long,
not symmetrical, and wears

Denise Levertov’s poem “Sound of the Axe” appeared in our Spring 1981 issue. Once a woman went into the woods.
The birds were silent. Why? she said.
Thunder, they told her,
thunder is coming.
She walked on, and the trees were dark
and rustled their l…

Denise Levertov’s poem “The Mutes” appeared in our Winter 1965 issue. Levertov was born in Britain but immigrated to the United States when she was twenty-five; she died in 1997. Those groans men use
passing a woman on the street
or on the steps of t…