Socrates Ghost Must Haunt Me Now

Delmore Schwartz

Socrates ghost must haunt me now,
Notorious death has let him go,
He comes to me with a clumsy bow,
Saying in his disused voice,
That I do not know I do not know,
The mechanical whims of appetite
Are all that I have of conscious choice,
The butterfly caged in eclectic light
Is my only day in the world’s great night,
Love is not love, it is a child
Sucking his thumb and biting his lip,
But grasp it all, there may be more!
From the topless sky to the bottomless floor
With the heavy head and the fingertip:
All is not blind, obscene, and poor.
Socrates stands by me stockstill,
Teaching hope to my flickering will,
Pointing to the sky’s inexorable blue
—Old Noumenon, come true, come true!

Next 10 Poems

• Delmore Schwartz : Someone Is Harshly Coughing As Before
• Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets And Experiences
• Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Vakzy, James Joyce, Et Al.
• Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet: O City, City
• Delmore Schwartz : Sonnet: The Ghosts Of James And Peirce In Harvard Yard
• Delmore Schwartz : Spiders
• Delmore Schwartz : The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar
• Delmore Schwartz : The Ballet Of The Fifth Year
• Delmore Schwartz : The Beautiful American Word, Sure
• Delmore Schwartz : The Choir And Music Of Solitude And Silence

Previous 10 Poems

• Delmore Schwartz : Saint, Revolutionist
• Delmore Schwartz : Prothalamion
• Delmore Schwartz : Poem ( You, My Photographer, You, Most Aware )
• Delmore Schwartz : Poem ( Remember Midsummer: The Fragrance Of Box )
• Delmore Schwartz : Poem ( Old Man In The Crystal Morning After Snow )
• Delmore Schwartz : Poem ( In The Morning, When It Was Raining )
• Delmore Schwartz : Phoenix Lyrics
• Delmore Schwartz : Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontology
• Delmore Schwartz : Parlez-vous Francais?
• Delmore Schwartz : Out Of The Watercolored Window, When You Look