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.
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I promised to repost this for someone and now I can't remember who -- please tell me if it was you!
It was a drizzly and rather chilly Saturday morning, but by noon the rain had stopped and it was turning into a lovely fall day. So we went on the Countryside Artisans fall tour, starting as we often do at Art of Fire, whose stock was sparse because much of the glass is on sale now at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Then we went to two pottery studios, Something Earthy, where we got a sea turtle sponge holder, and Niswander, where we got a garden toad, and finished at Dancing Leaf Farm, where in addition to the gorgeous yarn there was some gorgeous jewelry on sale!
A Green Man and directions at Niswander.
One of Something Earthy Pottery Studio's chickens...
...and a pony and a goat and me.
Reflected in a witch ball at Art of Fire.
With one of the wooly sheep at Dancing Leaf Farm...
...and yarn made from the woolies!
Wearing the necklace I bought there!
On the way home we stopped to have a drink with my friend Louise, who is in town for our high school reunion, which took place tonight. None of my very best friends from high school -- either the local ones or the ones from out of town -- were going, so I chickened out as well, but it was wonderful to see her! Hopefully when she is next in the area for work, we can go do something cultural or enjoy the local scenery. The hotel bar had the great tragedy of the Orioles game on television; we got to see the end when we got home, and even this week's mediocre Doctor Who was less painful!
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