THE DECEPTIVE PRESENT, THE PHOENIX YEAR

As I looked, the poplar rose

Like a slender throat,

And there was an exaltation of flowers,

The surf of apple-trees flowering.

All winter the trees had been

Silent soldiers, a vigil of woods:,
Their hidden feelings

Scrawled and became

Scores of black vines:

Who could believe then

In the green vividness of full-leafed summer?

Who believes now, as winter begins,

Beholding the wooden trees, pine, fir, and barberry like barbed
wire,

In the reality of spring and of birth,

In the inexhaustible vitality of the dark earth

And the slow recurrent miracles of the sun's great fire,

Bringing once again the flowering spring and the green opulence
of summer?

As I looked, the poplar rose in the shining air
Like a slender throat,
And there was an exaltation of flowers,
The surf of apple tree delicately foaming.

All winter, the trees had been
Silent soldiers, a vigil of woods,
Their hidden feelings
Scrawled and became
Scores of black vines,
Barbed wire sharp against the ice-white sky.
Who could believe then

In the green, glittering vividness of full-leafed summer?
Who will be able to believe, when winter again begins
After the autumn burns down again, and the day is ashen,
And all returns to winter and winter's ashes,
Wet, white, ice, wooden, dulled and dead, brittle or frozen,
Who will believe or feel in mind and heart
The reality of the spring and of birth,
And the green warm opulence of summer, and the inexhaustible
vitality and immortality of the earth?

Delmore Schwartz

THE MOUNTING SUMMER, BRILLIANT AND OMINOUS

A yellow-headed, gold-hammered, sunflower-lanterned

Summer afternoon: after the sun soared

All morning to the marble-shining heights of the marvellous blue
Like lions insurgent, bursting out of a great black zoo,
As if all radiance rode over and roved and dove
To the thick dark night where the fluted roots clutched and grasped
As if all vividness poured out, poured
Over, bursting and falling and breaking,

As when the whole ocean rises and rises, in irresistible,
uncontrollable motion, shaking :

The roar of the heart in a shell and the roar of the sea
beyond the concessions of possession
and the successes of time's continual procession.

DURING DECEMBER'S DEATH

The afternoon slowly turned dark early:
The light suddenly faded:
And I heard the voice of the cold dark saying:
Wait: Wait: wait as if you had always waited,
And as if it had always been dark
And as if the world had been, from the beginning
A stupendous sea of darkness and every house,
A lost and listening drunken ark in which the only light
Was the dread and the white of terrified animals' eyes.

DURING DECEMBER'S DEATH

The light suddenly faded:

DURING DECEMBER'S DEATH

The light suddenly faded:

Wait: wait: wait as if you had always waited,

And as if the world had been, from the beginning
sea of

A stupendous/darkness ark and every house,

A lost and listing drunken ark in which the only light