Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(... that time is the fire in which we burn.)
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn ...)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(... that time is the fire in which they burn.)
Avid its rush, that reeling blaze! ....
from Calmly We Walk through This April's Day by Delmore Schwartz
Oh please do not miss the last stanza of this poem - follow the link!
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I love the way Schwartz uses rhyme and rhythm here, and the parenthetical echoes of that schooling fire are like a Greek chorus. Making that phrase parenthetical until the final lines is a wonderful device: time feels parenthetical to experience - until it consumes us. (Note how he also changes the wording in the final lines.) I also love how, against that flame, he brings in the cool shadow of an idea of theodicy.
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Comments
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
...after having started calmly on an April day...soon to find out about Summer Knowledge (perhaps the best pairing of words ever).
What will become of you and me...besides the photo and the memory?...reminds me of something rita wrote recently...
thanks, c&v. This is great.
all would be advised
to allow their writing age
say at least a day
or an interval of decent
imbibing sponge-like
,
Yes!!!
(those last two lines, they speak to me)