Denise Levertov was affiliated with the group of Black Mountain poets who created a highly personal narrative style during the 1950s. In her poem “Patience”, we are immersed in the perspective of an old mare who is bowing in a muddy field. In the poet’s mind this emblem of earthliness has arrived at a kind of “zen” state of shelter that the writer imagines entering as well.

Patience

What patience a landscape has, like an old horse,
head down in its field.
Grey days,
air and fine rain cling, become one, hovering till at last,
languidly, rain relinquishes that embrace, consents
to fall. What patience a hill, a plain,
a band of woodland holding still, have, and the slow falling
of grey rain...Is it blind faith? Is it
merely a way to deeply rest? Is the horse
only resigned, or has it
some desirable knowledge, an enclosed meadow
quite other than its sodden field,
which patience is the key to? Has it already
within itself, entered the sunwarmed shelter?