The Mounting Summer, Brilliant and Ominous / Delmore Schwartz

The Mounting Summer, Brilliant and Ominous

A yellow-headed, gold-hammered, sunflower-lanterned
Summer afternoon: after the sun soared and soared
All morning to the marble shining heights of marvellous blue,
Like lions insurgent, bursting out of a great zoo,
As if all vividness poured down, poured out, poured
Over, bursting and breaking in all the altitudes of blaze,
As when the whole ocean rises and rises in irresistable motion, shaking;
The roar of the heart in a shell or the roar of the sea beyond the 

  concessions of possession and the secessions of time's fearful procession, 

  precious even in continuous perishing.

~~
Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)
from Summer Knowledge: New and selected poems, 1959

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Delmore Schwartz biography

Amin010n, Burning sunny day, 2020 (detail). CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.