"Poet and veteran of childhood, look! <br />See in me the obscene, for you have love, <br /> <br />For you have hatred, you, you must be judge, <br />Deliver judgement, Delmore Schwartz. <br /> <br />Well-known wishes have been to war, <br />The vicious mouth has chewed the vine. <br /> <br />The patient crab beneath the shirt <br />Has charmed such interests as Indies meant. <br /> <br />For I have walked within and seen each sea, <br />The fish that flies, the broken burning bird, <br /> <br />Born again, beginning again, my breast! <br />Purple with persons like a tragic play. <br /> <br />For I have flown the cloud and fallen down, <br />Plucked Venus, sneering at her moan. <br /> <br />I took the train that takes away remorse; <br />I cast down every king like Socrates. <br /> <br />I knocked each nut to find the meat; <br />A worm was there and not a mint. <br /> <br />Metaphysicians could have told me this, <br />But each learns for himself, as in the kiss. <br /> <br />Polonius I poked, not him <br />To whom aspires spire and hymn, <br /> <br />Who succors children and the very poor; <br />I pierced the pompous Premier, not Jesus Christ, <br /> <br />I picked Polonius and Moby Dick, <br />the ego bloomed into an octopus. <br /> <br />Now come I to the exhausted West at last; <br />I know my vanity, my nothingness, <br /> <br />now I float will-less in despair's dead sea, <br />Every man my enemy. <br /> <br />Spontaneous, I have too much to say, <br />And what I say will no one not old see: <br /> <br /> <br />If we could love one another, it would be well. <br />But as it is, I am sorry for the whole world, myself <br />apart. My heart is full of memory and desire, and in <br />its last nervousness, there is pity for those I have <br />touched, but only hatred and contempt for myself."<br /><br />Delmore Schwartz<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/faust-in-old-age/
