Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
— The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
A Dog Named Ego, the Snowflakes as Kisses
A dog named Ego, the snowflakes as kisses
Fluttered, ran, came with me in December,
Snuffing the chill air, changing, and halting,
There where I walked toward seven o’clock,
Sniffed at some interests hidden and open,
Whirled, descending, and stood still, attentive
Seeking their peace, the stranger, unknown,
With me, near me, kissed me, touched my wound,
My simple face, obsessed and pleasure bound.
“Not free, no liberty, rock that you carry,”
So spoke Ego in his cracked and harsh voice,
While snowflakes kissed me and satisfied minutes,
Falling from some place half believed and unknown,
“You will not be free, nor ever alone,”
So spoke Ego, “Mine is the kingdom,
Dynasty’s bone: you will not be free,
Go, choose, run, you will not be alone.”
“Come, come, come,” sang the whirling snowflakes,
Evading the dog who barked at their smallness,
“Come!” sang the snowflakes, “Come here! and here!”
How soon at the sidewalk, melted, and done,
One kissed me, two kissed me! So many died!
While Ego barked at them, swallowed their touch,
Ran this way! And that way! While they slipped to the ground,
Leading him further and farther away,
While night collapsed amid the falling,
And left me no recourse, far from my home,
And left me no recourse, far from my home.
from GENESIS: BOOK I (1943)
Editor’s note
Genesis was Schwartz’s most ambitious and least successful work. A sprawling book-length poem interspersed with narrative prose, it was intended, through the alter ego of Hershey Green, to tell Schwartz’s life story, and by extension, the story of European Jews in America. The poem begins as Green is interrupted in his sleep, visited by anxious thoughts and memories, as well as by a host of jovial if cynical spirits who egg him on to tell his tale. In the prose sections, he begins with his ancestors’ lives in Europe, and works his way to his own seventh year in America. In verse passages that separate the prose, the ghosts comment in sometimes gorgeously lyrical, sometimes plodding poetry.
The narrative structure alone would make Genesis a hard book to excerpt, but further complicating the matter is its uneven quality. The prose is often flat, slow, and sentimental, and the voices of the ghosts in verse are often unbelievable or downright silly. But there isn’t a page without good, even great lines and passages.
Genesis was deeply important to Schwartz; in phases of manic self-confidence, he thought the poem would make him immortal, and when despairing he thought it a complete failure. I have chosen to include these selections not because they show Schwartz at his best, but because this work was central to his conception of himself as a person and as a writer. Also, almost none of this book has been available since its initial printing in 1943. A full view of what Schwartz worked to accomplish would be incomplete without it.
I have used this symbol [~] to indicate breaks between selections. My selections begin with the poem’s opening passage.
Selections
“…. Me next to sleep, all that is left of Eden,”
— The one who speaks is not remarkable
In the great city, circa 1930,
His state is not uncommon in the world,
O, by no means, sleepless and seeking sleep
As one who wades in water to the thighs,
Dragging it soft and heavy near the shore;
For now his body’s lapse and ignorance
Permits his heavy mind certain loose sleeves,
Loose sleeves of feeling drawing near a drowse:
He knows of dark and sleep the unity,
He knows all being’s consanguinity,
All anguish sinks into the first of seas,
The sea which soothes with softness ultimate
— Thus he descends,
and coughs, coughs!
the old cold comes,
Jack-in-the-box, the conscious mind snaps up!
— He wakes,
his fuzzed gaze strains the dark,
And at the window’s outline looks, in shock,
To see a certain whiteness glitter there,
Snow! dragging him to the window
With hurried heart. The childhood love still lives in him,
Like a sweet tooth in grown-up married girls,
December’s white delight, a fourth year wish,
The classic swan disguised in modern life,
Freedom and silence shining in New York!
But, standing by the window, sees the truth,
Four stories down the blank courtyard on which
The moonlight shines, diagonal and pale
— And high, the moon’s half-cut and glittering shell
Shines like the ice on which electric shines—
Says to himself, “How each view may be false!”
And then the whole thing happens all over again,
Waking, walking to the window, looking out,
Seeking for snow in May, a miracle
Quick in the dozing head’s compelled free mix
— He sees the snow which is not snow, but light,
The moonlight’s lie, error’s fecundity
Fallen from the dead planet near the roof—
Absolute dark and dream space fall on him,
And he through dark and space begins to fall,
At first afraid, then horrified, then calm.
Then the wide stillness in which dream belief
Begins, prepared for all. And he begins
Once more to tell himself all that he knows
Over and over and over and over again,
All of the lives that have come close to his,
All of his life, much mixed in memory
Many a night through which he cannot sleep,
Many a year, over and over again!
But now a voice begins, strange in the dark,
As from a worn victrola record, needle
Which skims and whirrs, a voice intoned
As of a weak old man with foreign accent,
Ironic, comic, flat and matter of fact,
With alternation measured, artificial,
moaned,
And yet with sympathy, simpatico
as if
A guardian angel sang!
Then other voices,
Bodiless in the dark, entered in chorus:
“He must tell all, amazed as the three Magi
When they beheld the puking child! All is
Not natural! That’s Life, the Magi too
Might have remarked to one another, Life