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

And all the vain men who, surrounding him,

Smiled in their vanity and sought his place—”

“Later, they made him out a prairie Christ

To sate the need coarse in the national heart—”

“His wife went insane, Mary Todd too often

Bought herself dresses. And his child died.

And he would not condemn young men to death

For having slept, in weakness. And he spoke

More than he knew and all that he had felt

Between outrageous joy and black despair

Before and after Gettysburg’s pure peak —”

“He studied law, but knew in his own soul

Despair’s anarchy, terror and error,

— Instruments had to be taken from his office

And from his bedroom in such days of horror,

Because some saw that he might kill himself:

When he was young, when he was middle-aged,

How just and true was he, our national hero!”

“Sometimes he could not go home to face his wife,

Sometimes he wished to hurry or end his life!”

“But do not be deceived. He did not win,

And, it is plain, the South could never win

(Despite the gifted Northern generals!)

— Capitalismus is not mocked, O no!

This stupid deity decided the War—”

“In fact, the North and South were losers both:

— Capitalismus won the Civil War—”

“—Capitalismus won the Civil War,

Yet, in the War’s cruel Colosseum,

Some characters fulfilled their natures’ surds,

Grant the drunkard, Lee the noble soldier,

John Brown in whom the Bible soared and cried,

Booth the unsuccessful Shakespearean,

— Each in some freedom walked and knew himself,

Then most of all when all the deities

Mixed with their barbarous stupidity

To make the rock, root, and rot of the war—”

“This is the way each only life becomes,

Tossed on History’s ceaseless insane sums!”

~

“A wise man says, Religion is what man

Does with his solitude: what a remark!

— We know, do we not know? what some men do

When left alone: Arnauld declared that Man

Was capable of any monstrous act

When left in solitude in his own room

— Pascal, his pupil, on the other hand,

Observed that all our trouble and our pain

Sprang from the failure to stay in one’s room?

— Les extrêmes se touchent : these poles which meet

Define a circle of uneasiness,

Somewhat a swaying sea. We are but sailors—”

“The early morning light becomes a sign:

It is the snow! Even as sometimes snow

Stands for the early morning light. These shifts

Show Baudelaire and Freud were well-advised,

Saying, Man walks through a dark wood of symbols,

All his life long, no matter what he does—”

“I when I heard of God from black despair

Rose always like a bird; quickly, lightly,

Prone in the former life to utter sadness

Because my efforts fell short many times:

I said to myself, ‘An infinite God!

If such a being really exists , he hears

What I am saying now. Does He not know

All, look at all, see all with perfect views?

And if He hears me, is it not possible

— Although I am not sure — that He will help me?

Is it a profanation of the pure Idea

Which makes me think that He really exists

To think that He will aid me in my pain?

Can I be sure?’”

“I too would think these thoughts, also unsure,

— And yet, thinking these thoughts I always rose,

I was less desperate, I could endure

My dark body’s awkward brutality,

I could endure my soul’s black guilt which hoped

The world would end, and all things, screaming, die ,

Because I was in my ambition stopped

The while my brother, friend, and enemy

Succeeds with seeming spontaneity,

And wins the girl, acclaim, the world’s applause!

Yes! when I thought of God Himself an sich ,

It was enough , although I knew He judged,

Judging the world in me!… Infinite joy

Flooded me then, as if I came to the shore

Of the cold sea upon a summer’s day,

And let my dear dark body be by water’s silk

All over touched and known! This was my stay,

My hope, my wish, my ground, my good, my God!”

“Will Hershey Green go down this old abyss

Of thought in days to come, since now he asks

Questions and answers of the Catholic boy?

— How can he help but go, being what he is?”

“The Sunday-looking people, like big flowers,

Know many shades, however secular:

They know the heart hangs down, a Christmas stocking,

They feel strange drafts, however warm the May,

They know that Nature sails like a Zeppelin

Precarious aloft in a dark void:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God!

— He marks the fall of sparrows, verily!”

“Everything happens in the mind of God,

This is the play it is, ever since Eden!”

“Let me revive my passions, far from this,

Although as relevant to the agonist,

Let me go off upon a candid cadenza,

Running through memories as shuffling cards:

— Branded by parents with identity,

(Mama and Papa who with private parts

Most irresponsibly began this crise ,)

I sailed the seven seas, I saw the Czar,

Millions of mighty men sang through my soul,

The stars stretched out senseless as alphabets,

I thought the world was anybody’s fun!

Gemütlichkeit was like the sunlight then!

The golded charging and electric earth

Appealed to me, full of such plants and sweets!

I saw the infamy which made me rich,

Capitalismus native to the heart,

Nothing like that before for egotism,

Never such forms and such fine playing fields!

I saw the evil of the average man

— Clio! between your legs obscenities

Performed and pushed! Jesus and Socrates

Downed by the populace with happiness,

— I saw all modern life in Street & Smith,

Promised virility, and social charm,

Strong muscles and trapped breasts hailed in the ads,

Yet Life was wonderful, beyond belief,

Wine was a light, and all the arts were lights,

The dancers with their discipline destroyed

The chaos and the waste of Broadway crowds,

They with their limbs an inner order knew,

They took it. with an easy willingness,

I took it too, from an orchestra seat

— But when will the houselights of the universe

Go on? You! You! trapped in your childhood!

Let us go back to the past, quickly and smoothly

The dark water closes its lips on today—”

~

“O Father of all hearts, give this poor boy the power

To speak his naked heart without excessive nausea,

O Dream behind the Dream, give him the strength

To see himself with disgust full depth and full length!”

“The history of Life repeats its endless circle,

over and over and over again,

In the new boy, in the new city, in the time forever new,

forever old,

— All of the famous characters are glimpsed again,

All the well-known events; yet something new,

Unique, undying, free, blessèd or damned!”

“Everything happens in the mind of God:

This is all

You need for wondrous hope, and this we give,

Sleepless Atlantic boy!”

“O no!

You do not give that, but give greater darkness,

All this is but a fixed hallucination

Made by the passion of imagination:

This may be false, if I know anything,

I do not know that all is in the mind of God,

I do not have that hope miraculous,

I am more certain of all other things,