Delmore Schwartz: The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

‘the withness of the body’ — Whitehead

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.

~~~

Delmore Schwartz (1913 – 1966) did graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University, where he studied with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Schwartz received acclaim for his first collection In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, published when he was 25 years old, but problems with alcoholism and mental illness prevented him from fulfilling his early promise. Nevertheless, his work had a strong influence on other writers including John Berryman, Lou Reed and Robert Lowell. Saul Bellow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Humboldt’s Gift was based on his relationship with Schwartz.

From In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (New Directions, 1938)