Read Delmore Schwartz biography
Where the light is, and each thing clear,Separate from all others, standing in its place,I drink the time and touch whatever's near,And hope for day when the whole world has that face:For what assures her present every year?In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.
Delmore SchwartzHow the false truths of the years of youth have passed!Have passed at full speed like trains which never stoppedThere where I stood and waited, hardly aware,How little I knew, or which of them was the oneTo mount and ride to hope or where true hope arrives.
Delmore SchwartzI no more wrote than read that book which isThe self I am, half hidden as it isFrom one and all who see within a kissThe lounging formless blackness of an abyss.How could I think the brief years were enoughTo prove the reality of endless love?
Delmore SchwartzBut this, this which we say before we’re sorry,This which we live behind our unseen faces,Is neither dream, nor childhood, neitherMyth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,For we are incomplete and know no future,And we are howling or dancing out our soulsIn beating syllables before the curtain:We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.
Delmore SchwartzThat 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.
Delmore Schwartz