The Morning Light for One with Too Much Luck / Delmore Schwartz

from  Six Poems

The Morning Light for One with Too Much Luck

Sick and used Cambridge in the suck-
    Ing sound of slow rain at dead dawn
Slipped down, the slicking sound cars make
As if continually thin cloth were torn,

Blue light, plum light, fading violet light,
And then the oyster light of the wool sky:
Is this not, after all, appropriate
Light for a long used poet such as I?

The steady juices of the rain fulfill
November, ember, ashen ageing youth:
Here, my dear poet, with weather, wit, and will,
And a long look you learned to like the truth!

~~
Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)
from Commentary, March 1950

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Delmore Schwartz biography

Delmore Schwartz in Cambridge, MA, in the 1940s (cropped). The Nation.