Delmore Schwartz: O Love, Sweet Animal

O Love, dark animal,
With your strangeness go
Like any freak or clown:
Appease the child in her
Because she is alone
Many years ago
Terrified by a look
Which was not meant for her.
Brush your heavy fur
Against her, long and slow
Stare at her like a book,
Her interests being such
No one can look too much.
Tell her how you know
Nothing can be taken
Which has not been given:
For you time is forgiven:
Informed by hell and heaven
You are not mistaken.

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)