Praise Is Traditional and Appropriate
I loved the wood because I found in it
Mushrooms, berries, beetles, birds and other words,
Hedgehogs, squirrels, memories, quarrels,
and the damp smell
Of dead leaves, and former lives.
I reached the first barn
— where wheat was stored—halfway up the slope
of the ravine
And saw her dancing, glancing twinkly eyes
Full of the hope and love which all thought mean,
And slate-green, slate-blue, blue or black like the sunrise
Skies, and in their variety and in their sheen
I thought that she was looking down at me
As if she understood past, present, and futurity.
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The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz
edited by Ben Mazer
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2024
one of the posthumously published poems
