Delmore Schwartz

Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American, For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about, Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy, Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began: Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European; Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between; Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing in his breast The infinite and the gold Of the endless frontier, the deathless West. “Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten, Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and Shining in the darkness, of the light On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures, The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus, Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

What shall Presto do for pretty prattle To entertain his dears? Sunday: lightning fifty times! This week to Flanders goes the Duke of Ormond! Shall hope of him, although he loves me well! All of my hopes now possible, None certain. As, my lampoon Talked up all over, cried up to the sky —You are an impudent slut to be so positive Though all has gone just as you said it would! Sirrah! write constantly! don’t I write every day And sometimes twice? Stella writes like an emperor. Sirrah, I am surprised forever—by myself! Or by the others—dee dee: an angel child Stupid in me, stupid or innocent Astonished by the gush of vanity The stone and the eyes of pride—yet equally By the least straw or glitter of nobility! —Faith, Madame Dingley, what think you of the world to come? Patience! Patience is a gay thing—O saucy rogues, Patience is better than knowledge: be gay til I return. Mr. Harley speaks every kind thing to me. Truly, I do believe, would serve me if I stayed —Called at the coffee house, stayed there a while, Coldly converse with Mr. Addison: All our friendship and dearness now are off: Is it not odd? I think he has used me ill: I have as little pleasure as anyone In all the world, although I am In full favor with the entire ministry. Nothing gives Presto any dream of happiness But letters now and then from his delest ones. The pride of power, the pride and pleasure of place and power are Towers And trivial toys which lure me grievously Ravaging furiously in a lunation’s infuriation . . . Bursting the Rome in my head, my empire! Gulliver? Gullible! The Caesars in my heart Tell me how all infamy is possible, And certain treacheries extremely probable! I must take leave of deelest MD now. Prithee, Be merry, patient girls and love your Presto. I have read all the trash and I am weary: Deelest lives, there is peace and quiet with thee And thee alone. None have the leisure here for little things. Farewell again, dear rogues; I am never happy But when I think of thee MD. Sirrah, I have had enough of courts and ministries. I wish I were once more at Laracor: Faith, do you know each syllable  I write I hold my lips exact for all the world As if I talked the little language with MD. Yesterday died the Duke of Ormond’s daughter: Poor dear, she was with child. She was My favourite pet—save thee—I hardly knew A being more valuable, more beautiful, Of more nobility. I fear the certainty That she was thrown away quite carelessly, And merely lacked care. ’Tis clear, at any rate, That she was very healthy naturally. —Her Lord’s a puppy. I’ll no more of him, Now that he’s lost his only valuable . . . —I hate life when I see it thus exposed To accidents like these, so many thousands Burthening the earth with their stupidity, While such as she must die—abruptly—pointlessly. Somebody is coming wants a little place. My heart is set upon the cherry trees By the river side. My saucy sluts Farewell my deelest Nite poo dee MD . . . Y’see a Sea that’s ten miles wide, a town On t’other side, ships sailing in the Sea Discharging great Canons at MDs and mee, I see a great Sky, Moon and Stars, and ALL: I am a Fool.

THE MIND IS AN ANCIENT AND FAMOUS CAPITAL The mind is a city like London, Smoky and populous: it is a capital Like Rome, ruined and eternal, Marked by the monuments which no one Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces, Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled. The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration. “Call us what you will: we are made such by love.” We are such studs as dreams are made on, and Our little lives are ruled by the gods, by Pan, Piping of all, seeking to grasp or grasping All of the grapes; and by the bow-and-arrow god, Cupid, piercing the heart through, suddenly and forever. Dusk we are, to dusk returning, after the burbing, After the gold fall, the fallen ash, the bronze, Scattered and rotten, after the white null statues which Are winter, sleep, and nothingness: when Will the houselights of the universe Light up and blaze? For it is not the sea Which murmurs in a shell, And it is not only heart, at harp o’clock, It is the dread terror of the uncontrollable Horses of the apocalypse, running in wild dread Toward Arcturus—and returning as suddenly ... THE FEAR AND DREAD OF THE MIND OF THE OTHERS —The others were the despots of despair— The river’s freshness sailed from unknown sources— ... They snickered giggled, laughed aloud at last, They mocked and marvelled at the statue which was A caricature, as strained and stiff, and yet A statue of self-love!—since self-love was To them, truly my true love, how, then, was I a stillness of nervousness So nervous a caricature: did they suppose Self-love was unrequited, or betrayed? They thought I had fallen in love with my own face, And this belief became the night-like obstacle To understanding all my unbroken suffering, My studious self-regard, the pain of hope, The torment of possibility: How then could I have expected them to see me As I saw myself, within my gaze, or see That being thus seemed as a toad, a frog, a wen, a mole. Knowing their certainty that I was only A monument, a monster who had fallen in love With himself alone, how could I have Told them what was in me, within my heart, trembling and passionate Within the labyrinth and caves of my mind, which is Like every mind partly or wholly hidden from itself? The words for what is in my heart and in my mind Do not exist. But I must seek and search to find Amid the vines and orchards of the vivid world of day Approximate images, imaginary parallels For what is my heart and dark within my mind: Comparisons and mere metaphors: for all Of them are substitutes, both counterfeit and vague: They are, at most, deceptive resemblances, False in their very likeness, like the sons Who are alike and kin and more unlike and false Because they seem the father’s very self: but each one is —Although begotten by the same forbears—himself, The unique self, each one is unique, like every other one, And everything, older or younger, nevertheless A passionate nonesuch who has before has been. Do you hear, do you see? Do you understand me now, and how The words for what is my heart do not exist? THE RIVER WAS THE EMBLEM OF ALL BEAUTY:   ALL ... The river was the abundant belly of beauty itself The river was the dream space where I walked, The river was itself and yet it was—flowing and freshening— A self anew, another self, or self renewed At every tick of eternity, and by each glint of light Mounting or sparkling, descending to shade and black —Had I but told them my heart, told how it was Taunted at noon and pacified at dusk, at starfall midnight Strong in hope once more, ever in eagerness Jumping like joy, would they have heard? How could they? How, when what they knew was, like the grass, Simple and certain, known through the truth of touch, another form and fountain of falsehood’s fecundity— Gazing upon their faces as they gazed Could they have seen my faces as whores who are Holy and deified as priestesses of hope —the sacred virgins of futurity— Promising dear divinity precisely because They were disfigured ducks who might become And be, and ever beloved, white swans, noble and beautiful. Could they have seen how my faces were Bonfires of worship and vigil, blazes of adoration and hope —Surely they would have laughed again, renewed their scorn, Giggled and snickered, cruel. Surely have said This is the puerile mania of the obsessed, The living logic of the lunatic: I was the statue of their merriment, Dead and a death, Pharoah and monster forsaken and lost. ... My faces were my apes: my apes became Performers in the Sundays of their parks, Buffoons or clowns in the farce or comedy When they took pleasure in knowing that they were not like me. ... I waited like obsession in solitude: The sun’s white terror tore and roared at me, The moonlight, almond white, at night, Whether awake or sleeping, arrested me And sang, softly, haunted, unlike the sun But as the sun. Withheld from me or took away Despair or peace, making me once more With thought of what had never been before——

Manic-depressive Lincoln, national hero! How just and true that this great nation, being conceived In liberty by fugitives should find —Strange ways and plays of monstrous History— This Hamlet-type to be the President— This failure, this unwilling bridegroom, This tricky lawyer full of black despair— He grew a beard, becoming President, And took a shawl as if he guessed his role, Though with the beard he fled cartoonists’ blacks, And many laughed and were contemptuous, And some for four years spoke of killing him— He was a politician—of the heart!— He lived from hand to mouth in moral things! He understood quite well Grant’s drunkenness! It was for him, before Election Day, That at Cold Harbor Grant threw lives away In hopeless frontal attack against Lee’s breastworks! O how he was the Hamlet-man, and this, After a life of failure made him right, After he ran away on his wedding day, Writing a coward’s letter to his bride— How with his very failure, he out-tricked The florid Douglas and the abstract Davis, 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!”

In the naked bed, in Plato’s cave, Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall, Carpenters hammered under the shaded window, Wind troubled the window curtains all night long, A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding, Their freights covered, as usual. The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram Slid slowly forth. Hearing the milkman’s chop, His striving up the stair, the bottle’s chink, I rose from bed, lit a cigarette, And walked to the window. The stony street Displayed the stillness in which buildings stand, The street-lamp’s vigil and the horse’s patience. The winter sky’s pure capital Turned me back to bed with exhausted eyes. Strangeness grew in the motionless air. The loose Film grayed. Shaking wagons, hooves’ waterfalls, Sounded far off, increasing, louder and nearer. A car coughed, starting. Morning, softly Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair From underseas, kindled the looking-glass, Distinguished the dresser and the white wall. The bird called tentatively, whistled, called, Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so, O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail Of early morning, the mystery of beginning Again and again, while History is unforgiven.

In the green morning, before Love was destiny, The sun was king, And God was famous. The merry, the musical, The jolly, the magical, The feast, the feast of feasts, the festival Suddenly ended As the sky descended But there was only the feeling, In all the dark falling, Of fragrance and of freshness, of birth and beginning.

“the withness of the body” The heavy bear who goes with me, A manifold honey to smear his face, Clumsy and lumbering here and there, The central ton of every place, The hungry beating brutish one In love with candy, anger, and sleep, Crazy factotum, dishevelling all, Climbs the building, kicks the football, Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city. Breathing at my side, that heavy animal, That heavy bear who sleeps with me, Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar, A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp, Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope Trembles and shows the darkness beneath. —The strutting show-off is terrified, Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants, Trembles to think that his quivering meat Must finally wince to nothing at all. That inescapable animal walks with me, Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone, Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown, Stretches to embrace the very dear With whom I would walk without him near, Touches her grossly, although a word Would bare my heart and make me clear, Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed Dragging me with him in his mouthing care, Amid the hundred million of his kind, The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

When I was a young man, I loved to write poems And I called a spade a spade And the only only thing that made me sing Was to lift the masks at the masquerade. I took them off my own face, I took them off others too And the only only wrong in all my song Was the view that I knew what was true. Now I am older and tireder too And the tasks with the masks are quite trying. I’d gladly gladly stop if I only only knew A better way to keep from lying, And not get nervous and blue When I said something quite untrue: I looked all around and all over To find something else to do: I tried to be less romantic I tried to be less starry-eyed too: But I only got mixed up and frantic Forgetting what was false and what was true. But tonight I am going to the masked ball, Because it has occurred to me That the masks are more true than the faces: —Perhaps this too is poetry? I no longer yearn to be naïve and stern And masked balls fascinate me: Now that I know that most falsehoods are true Perhaps I can join the charade? This is, at any rate, my new and true view: Let live and believe, I say. The only only thing is to believe in everything: It’s more fun and safer that way!

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.” FRANZ KAFKA Father: On these occasions, the feelings surprise, Spontaneous as rain, and they compel Explicitness, embarrassed eyes—— Son: Father, you’re not Polonius, you’re reticent, But sure. I can already tell The unction and falsetto of the sentiment Which gratifies the facile mouth, but springs From no felt, had, and wholly known things. Father: You must let me tell you what you fear When you wake up from sleep, still drunk with sleep: You are afraid of time and its slow drip, Like melting ice, like smoke upon the air In February’s glittering sunny day. Your guilt is nameless, because its name is time, Because its name is death. But you can stop Time as it dribbles from you, drop by drop. Son: But I thought time was full of promises, Even as now, the emotion of going away—— Father: That is the first of all its menaces, The lure of a future different from today; All of us always are turning away To the cinema and Asia. All of us go To one indeterminate nothing. Son: Must it be so? I question the sentiment you give to me, As premature, not to be given, learned alone When experience shrinks upon the chilling bone. I would be sudden now and rash in joy, As if I lived forever, the future my toy. Time is a dancing fire at twenty-one, Singing and shouting and drinking to the sun, Powerful at the wheel of a motor-car, Not thinking of death which is foreign and far. Father: If time flowed from your will and were a feast I would be wrong to question your zest. But each age betrays the same weak shape. Each moment is dying. You will try to escape From melting time and your dissipating soul By hiding your head in a warm and dark hole. See the evasions which so many don, To flee the guilt of time they become one, That is, the one number among masses, The one anonymous in the audience, The one expressionless in the subway, In the subway evening among so many faces, The one who reads the daily newspaper, Separate from actor and act, a member Of public opinion, never involved. Integrated in the revery of a fine cigar, Fleeing to childhood at the symphony concert, Buying sleep at the drugstore, grandeur At the band concert, Hawaii On the screen, and everywhere a specious splendor: One, when he is sad, has something to eat, An ice cream soda, a toasted sandwich, Or has his teeth fixed, but can always retreat From the actual pain, and dream of the rich. This is what one does, what one becomes Because one is afraid to be alone, Each with his own death in the lonely room. But there is a stay. You can stop Time as it dribbles from you, drop by drop. Son: Now I am afraid. What is there to be known? Father: Guilt, guilt of time, nameless guilt. Grasp firmly your fear, thus grasping your self, Your actual will. Stand in mastery, Keeping time in you, its terrifying mystery. Face yourself, constantly go back To what you were, your own history. You are always in debt. Do not forget The dream postponed which would not quickly get Pleasure immediate as drink, but takes The travail of building, patience with means. See the wart on your face and on your friend’s face, On your friend’s face and indeed on your own face. The loveliest woman sweats, the animal stains The ideal which is with us like the sky ... Son: Because of that, some laugh, and others cry. Father: Do not look past and turn away your face. You cannot depart and take another name, Nor go to sleep with lies. Always the same, Always the same self from the ashes of sleep Returns with its memories, always, always, The phoenix with eight hundred thousand memories! Son: What must I do that is most difficult? Father: You must meet your death face to face, You must, like one in an old play, Decide, once for all, your heart’s place. Love, power, and fame stand on an absolute Under the formless night and the brilliant day, The searching violin, the piercing flute. Absolute! Venus and Caesar fade at that edge, Hanging from the fiftieth-story ledge, Or diminished in bed when the nurse presses Her sickening unguents and her cold compresses. When the news is certain, surpassing fear, You touch the wound, the priceless, the most dear. There in death’s shadow, you comprehend The irreducible wish, world without end. Son: I begin to understand the reason for evasion, I cannot partake of your difficult vision. Father: Begin to understand the first decision. Hamlet is the example; only dying Did he take up his manhood, the dead’s burden, Done with evasion, done with sighing, Done with revery. Decide that you are dying Because time is in you, ineluctable As shadow, named by no syllable. Act in that shadow, as if death were now: Your own self acts then, then you know. Son: My father has taught me to be serious. Father: Be guilty of yourself in the full looking-glass.

Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers. Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child, Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog, The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils, Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister, The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night, As if she understood the wind and rain, The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert. —O I am sad when I see dogs or children! For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean. Tell us, Freud, can it be that lovely children Have merely ugly dreams of natural functions? And you, too, Wordsworth, are children truly Clouded with glory, learned in dark Nature? The dog in humble inquiry along the ground, The child who credits dreams and fears the dark, Know more and less than you: they know full well Nor dream nor childhood answer questions well: You too are strangers, children are Shakespearean. Regard the child, regard the animal, Welcome strangers, but study daily things, Knowing that heaven and hell surround us, But this, this which we say before we’re sorry, This which we live behind our unseen faces, Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished, For we are incomplete and know no future, And we are howling or dancing out our souls In beating syllables before the curtain: We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.