Delmore Schwartz - Once and for All - The Best of Delmore Schwartz

“How in this death we need the metaphor:

We go from trope to trope like acrobats!”

“Surprises, Being’s surprises everywhere,

— Cumuli clouds full of ontologies!”

“We in our death enjoy this very much,

Seeing how one thing is another thing

In certain ways, a girl being a rose

In certain ways, a poet being a train

(Because he takes you where you have not been),

Painting as light, sleep as essential sin

(Being a desperate abandonment)….”

“Light is the heroine of all the paintings,

The camera is the hero of the screen!”

“Such metaphors are pleasant. But some come

Which show us with their light how much we missed

(Who were not those on whom nothing is lost )

When we were there and could ; and might have loved…”

“How much we did not see when we were there,

Walking through Life self-blinded by desire

— Such metaphors like the rack torture us

With utter memory and that remorse

Forever late , which is the greatest pain!”

~

“Now I will really know how good it is

To have the sleep of Eden, like a tree,

I will bear this in mind like a man reprieved

(O how their voices influence my voice!)

And make myself think of the horror which

I have escaped! enjoying everything ,

Taking keen pleasure in the smallest things,

Tying my laces, or sharpening a pencil—”

Yet as he spoke, he feared it was not true,

And yet enjoyed it all as he enjoyed

Soft drinks on summer days after a game,

Gulped down to drown the throat’s pulsating need—

His pride rose with these thoughts, vainglorious,

— O like a raving fire leaping up!

He told himself all that his mind might do,

Half-doubting and half hoping it was true:

“As Adam named the beasts, with careful love,

I name the animals and the divinities

Who walk about this newfoundland, America,

(Europe the greatest thing in North America!

For instance, as one voice just said to me)

— As Socrates, who questioned everything

Because his love was great, because he loved

Life very much, but not too much, and not

Enough to accept a life without the stars,

Thus now I’ll flick the salt of intellect

Upon all things, the critical salt which makes

All qualities most vivid and acute—

As Joseph, I’ll enact my sweet revenge

In basic psychological reviews,

Accuse the innocents who perjured me,

Me innocent: showing sublimely then,

The Justice who uncovers innocence,

Omniscient, generous, O all forgiving

And most successful brother who displays

How he was right throughout, in his conceit,

All dreams come true, and every feat performed—”

Then said a far-off singer in his style

Breaking in suddenly on Hershey’s peace,

“Let go this braggadocio, young man!

… Dunamos , dynamite, puissance, Power,

Divinity secretly close to the will

Like May beside the leaf: listen and speak,

The chorus is an ancient well-known goodness,

Like bread and wine, although more difficult. Cause

Is the secrecy and mystery. The Seed

Is marvellous. Let us look down on it. The Star…

Everything is a part and in the pit

Of all the nexi, darkness is cat-black,

In between sleeping and waking, part by part

(And once the sun blared like a lion, and once

The starlight fell like a petal, piercing the eye—)”

And then another ghost assumed the theme,

“Lincoln is on a penny in the mind,

A canton of the spirit! Rises and speaks!

And Jeeves and Cinderella show the boat

We all are in, the rotten ship of state!

Chaplin shuffles and tips his hat! Then runs!

John Bull and Uncle Sam are not cartoons

But heavy actual bullies boxing through us!

They move through all of us, like summer fine:

Keep thinking all the time, O New York boy!

Go back,

In each, all natural being once more lives!

The subtile serpent which the apple brought

To Mamma and to Papa, starting all!

Caesar and Caesar’s pal also in you,

Also the servant and the comedian,

— Lo, he has set the world in each man’s heart!

And both the lamb and lion are quick in you,

The mountain and the lake, the tree and stone

All of these kinds their being must renew

— When you lie down to sleep, they rise in you!”

“Let us fly off and tour the world awhile,

Freely and frankly, going from branch to branch,

To show the boy trouvailles within the mind,

Many Americas found suddenly,

Surprise upon surprise upon surprise!”

“As, once I saw two nuns, like cameras;

There they were, taking pictures of modern life!”

“Remember this, young man, as we fly on,

Verdi at eighty-seven kneeled beneath

The bed to find a fallen collar-stud,

And apoplexy struck him down. Alas!

“Twas this he left out of his operas,

— Of actuality, the ragged richness!

Bend down under the bed and look for this!

O hear the children coming home from school,

And hear the gunshots of the starting car,

And hear the thin strings of the telephone,

And Sister’s ennui, practising her scales,

And see the cinders and the broken glass—”

“And yet, behold the heart within these things:

Change jingled in his pocket like gay pleasure,

And his checked tie was what an attitude.

In his lapel a flower quoted Nature—”

“And more and more, behold the dialectic,

How light brings shadow, how the evil, good,

And how each eminence needs lowness near,

And how each eminence brings straining Iago,

And too much good makes too much sorrow soon—”

“The mind skates like a falling star! the mind

Speeds between heaven and earth like Light itself!”

“The gold, the vivid, and the actual

Will melt like flakes upon the open hand,

The mind in memory alone can live

(How many times I climbed on hands and knees

This Himalaya, depth on every side),

The memory alone can hold the self!

Logos alone can understand the blue—”

“If one but knew, if one knew Being-hood,

— This is as if we sat after a dinner,

And heard of many years in unity,

Or noble lords and ladies who have left

The city struck by plague, passing the time—”

“In us, all natural being once more lives,

— A skein of geese, a walk of snipe,

A murmuration of starlings, an exultation

Of larks, a watch of nightingales, a host

Of sparrows, a cast of hawks, a pride of lions,

a sloth of bears,

A route of wolves, a rag of colts,

a mute of hounds,

A cowardice of curs, a shrewdness of apes,

A luxury of nymphs, a lilt of mares,

A round of girls, a dark of plays, a jig

Of vaudeville, a crowd of joys

— Blue grapes and yellow pears beside a jar!

— All of this life and more, much more in us!

Later we will unmask, singing our names!”

“—Her privates we, yet ignorant in death,

We wait to see Eternity’s worst views—”

Then said another singer in his style,

“ In medias res , in the middle of Life,

In the middle of everything, sick boy,

— Where is the first of consciousness, where is

Where first-hand memory begins for you—”

“Eden, image of many complex thoughts

About beginning, hangs just like a picture

In many living rooms in the Western World;

Later, we might consider it; not now, later—”

“Begin in any place in consciousness,