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

I taught them of early morning light:

May I not cite this as a little good?”

Summer Knowledge

Summer knowledge is not the winter’s truth, the truth of fall, the autumn’s fruition, vision, and recognition:

It is not May knowledge, little and leafing and growing green, blooming out and blossoming white,

It is not the knowing and the knowledge of the gold fall and the ripened darkening vineyard,

Nor the black tormented, drenched and rainy knowledge of birth, April, and travail,

The knowledge of the womb’s convulsions, and the coiled cord’s ravelled artery, severed and cut open,

as the root forces its way up from the dark loam:

The agony of the first knowledge of pain is worse than death, or worse than the thought of death:

No poppy, no preparation, no initiation, no illusion, only the beginning, so distant from all knowledge

and all conclusion, all indecision and all illusion.

Summer knowledge is green knowledge, country knowledge, the knowledge of growing and the supple recognition of the fullness and the fatness and the roundness of ripeness.

It is bird knowledge and the knowing that trees possess when

The sap ascends to the leaf and the flower and the fruit,

Which the root never sees and the root believes in the darkness and the ignorance of winter knowledge

— The knowledge of the fruit is not the knowledge possessed by the root in its indomitable darkness of ambition

Which is the condition of belief beyond conception of experience or the gratification of fruition.

Summer knowledge is not picture knowledge, nor is it the knowledge of lore and learning.

It is not the knowledge known from the mountain’s height, it is

not the garden’s view of the distant mountains of hidden fountains;

It is not the still vision in a gold frame, it is not the measured and treasured sentences of sentiments;

It is cat knowledge, deer knowledge, the knowledge of the full-grown foliage, of the snowy blossom and the rounding fruit.

It is the phoenix knowledge of the vine and the grape near summer’s end, when the grape swells and the apple reddens:

It is the knowledge of the ripening apple when it moves to the fullness of the time of falling to rottenness and death.

For summer knowledge is the knowledge of death as birth,

Of death as the soil of all abounding flowering flaring rebirth.

It is the knowledge of the truth of love and the truth of growing: it is the knowledge before and after knowledge:

For, in a way, summer knowledge is not knowledge at all: it is

second nature, first nature fulfilled, a new birth

and a new death for rebirth, soaring and rising out

of the flames of turning October, burning November,

the towering and falling fires, growing more and

more vivid and tall

In the consummation and the annihilation of the blaze of fall.

“I Am Cherry Alive,” the Little Girl Sang

For Miss Kathleen Hanlon

“I am cherry alive,” the little girl sang,

“Each morning I am something new:

I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited

As the boys who made the Hallowe’en bang:

I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:

When I like, if I like, I can be someone new,

Someone very old, a witch in a zoo:

I can be someone else whenever I think who,

And I want to be everything sometimes too:

And the peach has a pit and I know that too,

And I put it in along with everything

To make the grown-ups laugh whenever I sing:

And I sing: It is true; It is untrue ;

I know, I know, the true is untrue,

The peach has a pit, the pit has a peach:

And both may be wrong when I sing my song,

But I don’t tell the grown-ups: because it is sad,

And I want them to laugh just like I do

Because they grew up and forgot what they knew

And they are sure I will forget it some day too.

They are wrong. They are wrong. When I sang my song, I knew, I knew!

I am red, I am gold, I am green, I am blue,

I will always be me, I will always be new!”

Baudelaire

When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,

I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking

Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,

Having no relation to my affairs.

Dear Mother, is any time left to us

In which to be happy? My debts are immense.

My bank account is subject to the court’s judgment.

I know nothing. I cannot know anything.

I have lost the ability to make an effort.

But now as before my love for you increases.

You are always armed to stone me, always:

It is true. It dates from childhood.

For the first time in my long life

I am almost happy. The book, almost finished,

Almost seems good. It will endure, a monument

To my obsessions, my hatred, my disgust.

Debts and inquietude persist and weaken me.

Satan glides before me, saying sweetly:

“Rest for a day! You can rest and play today.

Tonight you will work.” When night comes,

My mind, terrified by the arrears,

Bored by sadness, paralyzed by impotence,

Promises: “Tomorrow: I will tomorrow.”

Tomorrow the same comedy enacts itself

With the same resolution, the same weakness.

I am sick of this life of furnished rooms.

I am sick of having colds and headaches:

You know my strange life. Every day brings

Its quota of wrath. You little know

A poet’s life, dear Mother: I must write poems,

The most fatiguing of occupations.

I am sad this morning. Do not reproach me.

I write from a café near the post office,

Amid the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes,

The pounding of my heart. I have been asked to write

“A History of Caricature.” I have been asked to write

“A History of Sculpture.” Shall I write a history

Of the caricatures of the sculptures of you in my heart?

Although it costs you countless agony,

Although you cannot believe it necessary,

And doubt that the sum is accurate,

Please send me money enough for at least three weeks.

Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon along the Seine

To Meyer and Lillian Schapiro

What are they looking at? Is it the river?

The sunlight on the river, the summer, leisure,

Or the luxury and nothingness of consciousness?

A little girl skips, a ring-tailed monkey hops

Like a kangaroo, held by a lady’s lead

(Does the husband tax the Congo for the monkey’s keep?)

The hopping monkey cannot follow the poodle dashing ahead.

Everyone holds his heart within his hands:

A prayer, a pledge of grace or gratitude

A devout offering to the god of summer, Sunday and plenitude.

The Sunday people are looking at hope itself.

They are looking at hope itself, under the sun, free from the teething anxiety, the gnawing nervousness

Which wastes so many days and years of consciousness.

The one who beholds them, beholding the gold and green

Of summer’s Sunday is himself unseen. This is because he is

Dedicated radiance, supreme concentration, fanatically threading

The beads, needles and eyes — at once! — of vividness and permanence.

He is a saint of Sunday in the open air, a fanatic disciplined

By passion, courage, passion, skill, compassion, love: the love of life and the love of light as one, under the sun, with the love of life.

Everywhere radiance glows like a garden in stillness blossoming.

Many are looking, many are holding something or someone

Little or big: some hold several kinds of parasols:

Each one who holds an umbrella holds it differently