| Calmly We Walk through This April's Day |
| BY DELMORE SCHWARTZ |
| - |
| 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! |
| Where is my father and Eleanor? |
| Not where are they now, dead seven years, |
| But what they were then? |
|
No more? No more?
|
| From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day, |
| Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume |
| Not where they are now (where are they now?) |
| But what they were then, both beautiful; |
| - |
| Each minute bursts in the burning room, |
| The great globe reels in the solar fire, |
| Spinning the trivial and unique away. |
| (How all things flash! How all things flare!) |
| What am I now that I was then? |
| May memory restore again and again |
| The smallest color of the smallest day: |
| Time is the school in which we learn, |
| Time is the fire in which we burn. |
| . |
| . |
...and(for good or bad) the independence that sets us apart from others has finally set me apart from everyone