Delmore Schwartz     Uncredited and Undated Photograph Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore Or near the bank of a woodland lake Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely Worthy of Mack Sennett’s camera and Florenz Ziegfield’s Foolish Follies. They splashed and swam with the wondrous unconsciousness Of their youth and beauty In the full spontaneity and summer of the fieshes of awareness Heightened, intensified and softened By the soft and the silk of the waters Blooded made ready by the energy set afire by the nakedness of the body, Electrified: deified: undenied. A young man of thirty years beholds them from a distance. He lives in the dungeon of ten million dollars. He is rich, handsome and empty standing behind the linen curtains Beholding them. Which girl does he think most desirable, most beautiful? They are all equally beautiful and desirable from the gold distance. For if poverty darkens discrimination and makes perception too vivid, The gold of wealth is also a form of blindness. For has not a Frenchman said, Although this is America… What he has said is not entirely relevant, That a naked woman is a proof of the existence of God. Where is he going? Is he going to be among them to splash and to laugh with them? They did not see him although he saw them and was there among them. He saw them as he would not have seen them had they been conscious Of him or conscious of men in complete depravation: This is his enchantment and impoverishment As he possesses them in gaze only. …He felt the wood secrecy, he knew the June softness The warmth surrounding him crackled Held in by the mansard roof mansion He glimpsed the shadowy light on last year’s brittle leaves fallen, Looked over and overlooked, glimpsed by the fall of death, Winter’s mourning and the May’s renewal.— Delmore Schwartz, “A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased, Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir” 1962

Delmore Schwartz     Uncredited and Undated Photograph

Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore

Or near the bank of a woodland lake

Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely

Worthy of Mack Sennett’s camera and Florenz Ziegfield’s

Foolish Follies.

They splashed and swam with the wondrous unconsciousness

Of their youth and beauty

In the full spontaneity and summer of the fieshes of

awareness

Heightened, intensified and softened

By the soft and the silk of the waters

Blooded made ready by the energy set afire by the

nakedness of the body,

Electrified: deified: undenied.

A young man of thirty years beholds them from a distance.

He lives in the dungeon of ten million dollars.

He is rich, handsome and empty standing behind the linen curtains

Beholding them.

Which girl does he think most desirable, most beautiful?

They are all equally beautiful and desirable from the gold distance.

For if poverty darkens discrimination and makes

perception too vivid,

The gold of wealth is also a form of blindness.

For has not a Frenchman said, Although this is America…

What he has said is not entirely relevant,

That a naked woman is a proof of the existence of God.

Where is he going?

Is he going to be among them to splash and to laugh with them?

They did not see him although he saw them and was there among them.

He saw them as he would not have seen them had they been conscious

Of him or conscious of men in complete depravation:

This is his enchantment and impoverishment

As he possesses them in gaze only.

…He felt the wood secrecy, he knew the June softness

The warmth surrounding him crackled

Held in by the mansard roof mansion

He glimpsed the shadowy light on last year’s brittle leaves fallen,

Looked over and overlooked, glimpsed by the fall of death,

Winter’s mourning and the May’s renewal.—

Delmore Schwartz, “A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased, Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir” 1962

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