Delmore Schwartz, “ Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day” (Lucky Words 2025, episode 4)

Recorded on site next to the river, up Provo Canyon in the second week of April 2025. As I was talking, the sun came from behind the mountain on the east and I went from slightly chilly to filled with glorious light. It was a good day.

Text of Poem

Here is is: “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?  
 My 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.  

Schwartz was a Jewish-American poet in the mid 20th century, and was very much a New Yorker. He spent most of his career teaching, and isn’t very widely read anymore. I think his poetry is more cerebral than sensual, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does make it hard to get excited at the first reading.

He died young (well, 52 feels young to me for anyone to die) of a heart attack, but had spent much of his adult life struggling with alcohol addiction and mental health issues.

Part of what makes this poem a little difficult is how he uses his verbs. Look these lines from the end of the poem: “My memory restore again and again / The smallest color of the smallest day.” What exactly is going on there? It would be a lot easier if he said “my memory restores [present tense] again and again…” because he would be telling us that his memory brings back tiny snippets of memory. Or imagine this version, “I wish that my memory could restore again and again…” to show that much is lost from his memory, but he wishes it were back. Or even, “To my memory: please restore again and again…”

Schwartz of course doesn’t give us that clarity, so we have to make it up ourselves. Which is part of what makes poetry cool, but it’s also work, and I get it, people don’t want to work for their leisure.¹

Next up

Shakespeare’s sonnet #3 is next on the docket. Yes, it is another procreation sonnet, but I think that sonnet #3 is a particularly good one.

1. Which is complete bunk, of course. People love working for their leisure. That’s why there are three types of fun. We live in a world where people are addicted to going to the gym! Worst case, maybe this is like going to the gym for your brain. Imagine how cool you’ll be when you’re mentally swole.