Poetry Thursday - The Departure by Denise Levertov

No particular poem has come my way this week, so I pick a book at random from the shelf. It's this one -

purchased, according to my notation, in January 1987 (I used to buy entire books after coming across one poem; sheer greed). It moved with me from the previous abode, and survived a recent bookpurge, but hasn't been opened since. 

This poem is on the first page, and was originally published in With Eyes at the Back of our Heads (1960) -

The Departure

Have you got the moon safe?

Please, tie those strings a little tighter.

This loaf, push it down further

the light is crushing it - such a baguette

golden brown and so white inside

you don't see every day

nowadays. And for God's sake

don't let's leave in the end

without the ocean! Put it

in there among the shoes, and

tie the moon on behind. It's time!

"Born in England in 1923, poet Denise Levertov began writing at a young age, sharing some of her poems with T.S. Eliot when she was 12 years old. Levertov published her first poetry collection, The Double Image, in England in 1940. Seventeen years later, she had her American collection, Here and Now, released. In the 1960s, Levertov was active in the anti-war movement in the United States. Additionally, she worked as a poetry editor for The Nation in the '60s and for Mother Jones in the '70s. Levertov died in 1997."  Read more at biography.com