35 The Heavy Bear by Delmore Schwartz
In this poem, Schwartz likens his body to a “heavy bear who goes with me,” distorting or thwarting the finer self he longs to present.
“That heavy animal” is a creature of crude appetites, for “candy, anger and sleep.” He is a “show-off,” but fears death. He interposes himself between the poet widens to encompass not just the individual problem of the poet’s appetites, but also “the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.” – Leon Kass
The Heavy Bear
“the withness of the body”
The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
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.
Watch The Tao of Pooh (5:43) for a short explanation of the Chinese philosophy of Tao, signifying the “way”, “path”, “route”, “road” or sometimes more loosely “doctrine”, “principle” or “holistic beliefs.”
Consider this:
- The poet has a will that is not expressed in his physical self. Is he unhappy to have his particular body, or to have a body at all?
- What would the poet like to be?
- What is the word that would “bare my heart and make me clear”? Why does he not speak?
- Is the poet fair to the body? To “himself” ? Could there be poetry in the absence of “the heavy bear?”