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

The bed, the darkness, and my dear dark body

Are with me, certain,

God is a dream! And this is what

I do not know and have to know. O if

I only knew that! then what other lights on all—”

Thus Hershey Green, drawn in the opera,

Thrilled and enthralled by each new aria!

“Poor New York boy, with what finality

You will in time say, — and triumphantly!—

O what a metaphysical victory

The first morning and night of death must be!”

END OF BOOK ONE

FOR A PRINCESS (1950)

True Recognition Often Is Refused

We poets by the past and future used

Stare east and west distractedly at times,

Knowing there are, in fullness and in flower,

Chrysanthemums and Mozart in the room,

A stillness and a motion, both in bloom.

Or know a girl upon the sofa’s ease,

Curved like a stocking, being profoundly round,

As rich and dark as April’s underground.

We see in strict perception probity,

The lasting soil and good of all our art,

Which purifies the nervous turned-in heart.

And when we hear in music’s empty halls

Torn banners blowing in the rain and shame,

We know these passages are surfaces,

Knowing that our vocation cannot be

Merely a Sunday with the beautiful.

There is pace and grace we must fulfill.

For we must earn through dull dim suffering,

Through ignorance and darkened hope, and hope

Risen again, and clouded over again, and dead despair,

And many little deaths, hardly observed,

The early morning light we have deserved.

Starlight like Intuition Pierced the Twelve

The starlight’s intuitions pierced the twelve,

The brittle night sky sparkled like a tune

Tinkled and tapped out in the xylophone.

Empty and vain, a glittering dune, the moon

Arose too big, and, in the mood which ruled,

Seemed like a useless beauty in a pit;

And then one said, after he carefully spat:

“No matter what we do, he looks at it!

“I cannot see a child or find a girl

Beyond his smile which glows like that spring moon.”

“—Nothing no more the same,” the second said,

“Though all may be forgiven, never quite healed

The wound I bear as witness, standing by;

No ceremony surely appropriate,

Nor secret love, escape or sleep because

No matter what I do, he looks at it—”

“Now,” said the third, “no thing will be the same:

I am as one who never shuts his eyes,

The sea and sky no more are marvelous,

And I no longer understand surprise!”

“Now,” said the fourth, “nothing will be enough,

— I heard his voice accomplish all wit:

No word can be unsaid, no deed withdrawn,

— No matter what is said, he measures it!”

“Vision, imagination, hope or dream,

Believed, denied, the scene we wished to see?

It does not matter in the least: for what

Is altered, if it is not true? That we

Saw goodness, as it is— this is the awe

And the abyss which we will not forget,

His story now the sky which holds all thought:

No matter what I think, I think of it!”

“And I will never be what once I was,”

Said one for long as narrow as a knife,

“And we will never be what once we were;

We have died once: this is a second life.”

My mind is spilled in moral chaos,” one

Righteous as Job exclaimed, “now infinite

Suspicion of my heart stems what I will,

— No matter what I choose, he stares at it!”

“I am as one native in summer places

— Ten weeks’ excitement paid for by the rich;

Debauched by that and then all winter bored,”

The sixth declared. “It is peak left us a ditch!”

“He came to make this life more difficult,”

The seventh said, “No one will ever fit

His measure’s heights, all is inadequate;

No matter what I do, what good is it?”

“He gave forgiveness to us: what a gift?”

The eighth chimed in. “But now we know how much

Must be forgiven. But if forgiven, what?

The crime which was will be; and the least touch

Revives the memory: what is forgiveness worth?”

The ninth spoke thus: “Who now will ever sit

At ease in Zion at the easter feast?

No matter what the place, he touches it!”

“And I will always stammer, since he spoke,”

One, who had been most eloquent, said, stammering,

“I looked too long at the sun; like too much light,

So too much goodness is a boomerang,”

Laughed the eleventh of the troop. “I must

Try what he tried: I saw the infinite

Who walked the lake and raised the hopeless dead:

No matter what the feat, he first accomplished it!”

So spoke the twelfth; and then the twelve in chorus:

“Unspeakable unnatural goodness is

Risen and shines, and never will ignore us;

He glows forever in all consciousness;

Forgiveness, love, and hope possess the pit,

And bring our endless guilt, like shadow’s bars:

No matter what we do, he stares at it!

What pity then deny? what debt defer?

We know he looks at us like all the stars,

And we shall never be as once we were,

This life will never be what once it was!”

He Heard the Newsboys Shouting “Europe! Europe!”

Dear Citizens,

I heard the newsboys shouting “Europe! Europe!”

It was late afternoon, a winter’s day

Long as a prairie, wool and ashen gray,

And then I heard the silence, drop by drop,

And knew I must again confront myself:

“What shall I cry from my window?” I asked myself,

“What shall I say to the citizens below?

Since I have been a privileged character

These four years past. Since I have been excused

From the war for the lesser evil, merciless

As the years to girls who once were beautiful.

What have I done which is a little good?

What apples have I grasped, for all my years?

What starlight have I glimpsed for all my guilt?”

Then to the dead silence I said, in hope:

“I am a student of the morning light,

And of the evil native to the heart.

I am a pupil of emotion’s wrongs

Performed upon the glory of this world.

Myself I dedicated long ago

— Or prostituted, shall I say? — to poetry,

The true, the good, and the beautiful,

Infinite fountains inexhaustible,

Full as the sea, old as the rocks,

new as the breaking surf—”

Such Answers Are Cold Comfort to The Dead

“What empty rhetoric,” the silence said,

“You teach the boys and girls that you may gain

The bread and wine which sensuality

Sues like a premier or a president.

These are illusions of your sense of guilt

Which shames you like a vain lie when revealed.

The other boys slumped like sacks on desperate shores.”

But well you know the life which I have lived,

Cut off in truth by all that I have been

From the normal pleasures of the citizen.

How often in the midnight street I passed

The party where the tin horns blew contempt

And the rich laughter rose as midnight struck,

The party where the New Year popped and foamed,

Opening like champagne or love’s wet crush,

The while I studied long the art which in

America wins silence like a wall.

— I am a student of the kinds of light,

I am a poet of the wakeful night,

In new and yet unknown America.

I am a student of love’s long defeat.

I gave the boys and girls my mind and art,