Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Mus in  General   

Nothing is given which is not taken.

Little or nothing is taken which is not freely desired,
freely, truly and fully.

"You would not seek me if you had not found me": this is
true of all that is supremely desired and admired...

"An enigma is an animal," said the hurried, harried
schoolboy:

And a horse divided against itself cannot stand;

And a moron is a man who believes in having too many
wives: what harm is there in that?

O the endless fecundity of poetry is equaled
By its endless inexhaustible freshness, as in the discovery
of America and of poetry.

Hence it is clear that the truth is not strait and narrow but infinite:
All roads lead to Rome and to poetry
and to poem, sweet poem
and from, away and towards are the same typography.

Hence the poet must be, in a way, stupid and naive and a
little child;

Unless ye be as a little child ye cannot enter the kingdom
of poetry.

Hence the poet must be able to become a tiger like Blake; a
carousel like Rilke.

Hence he must be all things to be free, for all impersonations
a doormat and a monument
to all situations possible or actual
The cuckold, the cuckoo, the conqueror, and the coxcomb.

It is to him in the zoo that the zoo cries out and the hyena:
"Hello, take off your hat, king of the beasts, and be seated,
Mr. Bones."

And hence the poet must seek to be essentially anonymous.
He must die a little death each morning.
He must swallow his toad and study his vomit
as Baudelaire studied la charogne of Jeanne Duval.

The poet must be or become both Keats and Renoir and
Keats as Renoir.
Mozart as Figaro and Edgar Allan Poe as Ophelia, stoned
out of her mind
drowning in the river called forever river and ever...

Keats as Mimi, Camille, and an aging gourmet.
He must also refuse the favors of the unattainable lady
(As Baudelaire refused Madame Sabatier when the fair
blonde summoned him,

For Jeanne Duval was enough and more than enough,
although she cuckolded him
With errand boys, servants, waiters; reality was Jeanne Duval.
Had he permitted Madame Sabatier to teach the poet a greater whiteness,
His devotion and conception of the divinity of Beauty
would have suffered an absolute diminution.)

The poet must be both Casanova and St. Anthony,

He must be Adonis, Nero, Hippolytus, Heathcliff, and
Phaedre,
Genghis Kahn, Genghis Cohen, and Gordon Martini
Dandy Ghandi and St. Francis,

Professor Tenure, and Dizzy the dean and Disraeli of Death.

He would have worn the horns of existence upon his head,
He would have perceived them regarding the looking-glass,
He would have needed them the way a moose needs a hatrack;
Above his heavy head and in his loaded eyes, black and scorched,
He would have seen the meaning of the hat-rack, above the glass
Looking in the dark foyer.

For the poet must become nothing but poetry,
He must be nothing but a poem when he is writing
Until he is absent-minded as the dead are
Forgetful as the nymphs of Lethe and a lobotomy...
("the fat weed that rots on Lethe wharf").

By Delmore Schwartz

Tell Your Friends About It | Print This Poem

Comments

You should be logged in to be able to leave comments

Other poems by Delmore Schwartz:

• A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased, Recognized And Mad
• A Young Child And His Pregnant Mother
• Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish
• America, America!
• Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Mus
• Archaic Bust Of Apollo
• At This Moment Of Time
• By Circumstances Fed
• Cambridge, Spring 1937
• Concerning The Synthetic Unity Of Apperception
• Far Rockaway
• Faust In Old Age
• For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Han
• From The Graveyard By The Sea
• From: A King Of Kings, A King Among The Kings
• In The Slight Ripple, The Mind Perceives The Heart
• Late Autumn In Venice
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• News Of The Gold World Of May
• O Love, Sweet Animal
• Occasional Poems
• Out Of The Watercolored Window, When You Look
• Parlez-Vous Francais?
• Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontolo
• Phoenix Lyrics
• Poem (Faithful to your commands, o consciousness)
• Poem (In the morning, when it was raining)
• Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow)
• Poem (Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box)
• Poem (You, my photographer, you, most aware)
• Prothalamion
• Saint, Revolutionist
• Socrates Ghost Must Haunt Me Now
• Someone Is Harshly Coughing As Before
• Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets And Experien
• Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, E
• Sonnet: O City, City
• Sonnet: The Ghosts Of James And Peirce In Harvard
• Spiders
• The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar
• The Ballet Of The Fifth Year
• The Beautiful American Word, Sure
• The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain
• The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Vari
• The Poet
• The Sin Of Hamlet
• The Spring
• Tired And Unhappy, You Think Of Houses
• To Helen
• What Curious Dresses All Men Wear
• What Is To Be Given
• Yeats Died Saturday In France