Title of Allusion

"Adam's Complaint"
Denise Levertov

Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon.

The bread,
the salt,
white meat and dark,
still hungry.

The marriage bed,
and the cradle,
still empty arms.

You give them land,
their own earth under their feet,
still want to take the roads.

And water: dig them the deepest well,
still it's not deep enough
to drink the moon from.

This poem, out of all the others in the volume, spoke to me the most. This poem is complex, yet simple and conveys a deep meaning, although it may not be the most lengthy. "Adam's Complaint" uses a few literary devices that help further Levertov's observation of humans never being satisfied.

The title itself is an alliteration. It refers to the Bible story of Adam and Eve. When God made man, he made Adam and gave him all the animals. But Adam was not satisfied; he wanted a human companion and so God made a woman, Eve. Levertov's choice for alliteration is extremely interesting, as it seems to be more of a confident assertion. It insinuates that she believes Adam was being greedy and one comes to this conclusion after reading the rest of her poem centered on the motif of greed. As a Christian, I thought long and hard about this assertion of Levertov. I have read the Creation Story many times and have never thought of Adam as greedy, only lonely. The title gives the poem a more cynical mood.

The breaks in the lines of the poem and the place of words are unique and purposeful. The first four stanzas' first lines are simply the subject of the sentence she is trying to form. This is so the reader can see the main purpose of the stanza. The subject also is extremely relatable to every day people. The last line in the first four stanzas begin with "still".  By repeating the word still it holds a resonance that sticks with the reader. The word is stressed so that one can clearly see it being tinged with disapproval and irony. Finally, in the last stanza, Levertov mixes it up with structure. She puts the subject and purpose of the subject in the first line. It becomes clear that the reason she did this is to finish her poem in what is called full circle, In this case, she starts the first stanza about the moon and ends her last stanza with the moon as to bring back to her main point is that people desire unrealistic objects.

Finally, the content and theme of this poem is that people are never satisfied with what they have and that makes them undesirably greedy. She starts off obscure, with "no matter what you give them/ [they] still want the moon" (2-3). This implies they could be as ridiculous as giving them the sun, but they want the moon. She then narrows it down to giving "bread/ salt/ white meat and dark" and the person is "still hungry" (4-7). Stanza three is meaningful because it talks about emotional greed rather than physical. The "empty arms" are more metaphorical (10). She implies that one is given a marriage and a baby, which usually fill life with joy, but it is not enough and his/her life is still empty. The next stanza touches metaphorically on physical ownership. You give them something of their own in this case land, and they end up using something that does not belong to them, roads. The last stanza may influence the reader to believe it will say how people's thirst are never quenched, but it turns and say "still it's not deep enough/ to drink the moon from" (15-16). Levertov is stating that no matter what one does, they still might not be able to reach their goal, because sometimes one simply cannot have what they want.

Through alliteration, specific structure, and strong content, Levertov expertly emphasizes that human kind as a race has always been greedy. The examples she gives are solid and clear, which help further support her claim. The short sixteen line poem is given much deeper meaning with her clever title and use of literary devices.