(After Rilke)
We cannot know the indescribable face
Where the eyes like apples ripened. Even so,
His torso has a candelabra's glow,
His gaze, contained as in a mirror's grace,
Shines within it. Otherwise his breast
Would not be dazzling. Nor would you recognize
The smile that moves along his curving thighs,
There where love's strength is caught within its nest.
This stone would not be broken, but intact
Beneath the shoulders' flowing cataract,
Nor would it glisten like a stallion's hide,
Brimming with radiance from every side
As a star sparkles. Now it is dawn once more.
All places scrutinize you. You must be reborn.
(C) Delmore Schwartz
01/01/2000
Best Poems of Delmore Schwartz
- A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased, Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir
- Prothalamion
- Poem (you, My Photographer, You, Most Aware)
- Saint, Revolutionist
- The Greatest Thing In North America
- The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel
- Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontology
- The Poet
- Out Of The Watercolored Window, When You Look
- This Is A Poem I Wrote At Night, Before The Dawn
- America, America!
- The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar
- Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish
- A Young Child And His Pregnant Mother
- For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Hands
- Faust In Old Age
- Far Rockaway
- Concerning The Synthetic Unity Of Apperception
- Baudelaire
- Archaic Bust Of Apollo
- Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Muses