08-26-2024, 12:43 AM
Delmore Schwartz
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.
Charles Baudelaire,
in desperate translations
Correspondences
Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.
Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.
There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant
That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.
Meditation
Take it easy, Sadness. Settle down.
You asked for evening. Now, it’s come. It’s here.
A choking fog has blanketed the town,
infecting some with calm, the rest with fear.
While the squalid throng of mortals feels the sting
of heartless pleasure swinging its barbed knout
and finds remorse in slavish partying,
take my hand, Sorrow. I will lead you out,
away from them. Look as the dead years lurch,
in tattered clothes, from heaven’s balconies.
From the depths, regret emerges with a grin.
The spent sun passes out beneath an arch,
and, shroudlike, stretched from the antipodes,
—hear it, O hear, love!—soft night marches in.
Elevation
Over gutters and over parking lots,
over rooftops, fountains, cloudbanks and the bay,
beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills
unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known
universe, ghost, you slip out of me
with the ease of a swimmer
at one with the waves, furrowing the deep
with a pleasure we can’t articulate
as we fly from the contagion
of the world, bathing in vibrations
shed in silence from the stars, drinking up
the cold clear fire that purifies our emptiness.
Only when you ferry us
here, beyond the tedium and despair
that weigh us down, can we be happy, only when
animate wings beat through the haze of life and lift
up into the luminous do our thoughts like birds
trace patterns in the pearl-gray sky
and hover over life, understanding without effort
the lexicon of flowers, the syntax of all that will die.
The Abyss
Pascal had his abyss, that moved with him.
All is abyss—action, desire, dream,
words! And I often feel against my skin,
setting my hair on end, the wind of Fear.
All around me—the brink, the depths, the space;
I'm spellbound, petrified, frozen in place;
And on my midnights, God's skilled fingers trace
an ever-changing and unceasing nightmare.
I fear my dreams, as I would fear big holes
filled with vague dread, and leading who knows where.
I see infinity through every window,
and my mind, always plagued by vertigo,
yearns to become as numb as empty air.
Ah! Never stray from Numbers and from Souls!
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.
Charles Baudelaire,
in desperate translations
Correspondences
Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.
Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.
There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant
That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.
Meditation
Take it easy, Sadness. Settle down.
You asked for evening. Now, it’s come. It’s here.
A choking fog has blanketed the town,
infecting some with calm, the rest with fear.
While the squalid throng of mortals feels the sting
of heartless pleasure swinging its barbed knout
and finds remorse in slavish partying,
take my hand, Sorrow. I will lead you out,
away from them. Look as the dead years lurch,
in tattered clothes, from heaven’s balconies.
From the depths, regret emerges with a grin.
The spent sun passes out beneath an arch,
and, shroudlike, stretched from the antipodes,
—hear it, O hear, love!—soft night marches in.
Elevation
Over gutters and over parking lots,
over rooftops, fountains, cloudbanks and the bay,
beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills
unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known
universe, ghost, you slip out of me
with the ease of a swimmer
at one with the waves, furrowing the deep
with a pleasure we can’t articulate
as we fly from the contagion
of the world, bathing in vibrations
shed in silence from the stars, drinking up
the cold clear fire that purifies our emptiness.
Only when you ferry us
here, beyond the tedium and despair
that weigh us down, can we be happy, only when
animate wings beat through the haze of life and lift
up into the luminous do our thoughts like birds
trace patterns in the pearl-gray sky
and hover over life, understanding without effort
the lexicon of flowers, the syntax of all that will die.
The Abyss
Pascal had his abyss, that moved with him.
All is abyss—action, desire, dream,
words! And I often feel against my skin,
setting my hair on end, the wind of Fear.
All around me—the brink, the depths, the space;
I'm spellbound, petrified, frozen in place;
And on my midnights, God's skilled fingers trace
an ever-changing and unceasing nightmare.
I fear my dreams, as I would fear big holes
filled with vague dread, and leading who knows where.
I see infinity through every window,
and my mind, always plagued by vertigo,
yearns to become as numb as empty air.
Ah! Never stray from Numbers and from Souls!