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Read more poems by Delmore Schwartz: Delmore Schwartz Poems at Poetry X.

I

If nature is life, nature is death:
It is winter as it is spring:
Confusion is variety, variety
And confusion in everything
Make experience the true conclusion
Of all desire and opulence,
All satisfaction and poverty.

II

When a hundred years had passed nature seemed to man
                a clock
Another century sank away and nature seemed a jungle
                in a rock
And now that nature has become a ticking and hidden
                bomb how we must mock
Newton, Democritus, the Deity
The heart's ingenuity and the mind's infinite
    uncontrollable
                insatiable curiosity.

III

Purple black cloud at sunset: it is late August
and the light begins to look cold, and as we look,
listen and look, we hear the first drums of autumn.

Added: 25 Mar 2002 | Last Read: 3 Sep 2026 6:21 AM | Viewed: 4575 times

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