If memory serves, this is about Schwartz’s own alcoholism. I’m thinking of it in terms of depression this evening. Blame it on a long work day and an overdrawn bank account.
“the withness of the body” –Whitehead
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.
Susan Bordo uses it at the beginning of “Unbearable Weight”. For me, the heavy bear is the body itself — the “stupid clown of the spirit’s motive” is the clumsy manifestation of my pure intentions…
Thinking of you and sending love and support your way.
The heavy bear makes sense as the body, of course, but I keep coming back to the talk about the \”manifold honey.\” Would be body be so brutish if it weren\’t for the body\’s desires?
Yes — perhaps, as one more inclined to struggle with lust than with food, I am more willing to read this as being about male desire (”bulging his pants”, to me, refers to the engorged penis as well as the engorged stomach…)
Ah well, that’s the beauty of poetry, eh?
I think I need to break out of the confessional poet genre, eh?
I have always thought of anger when I read this. Like many other great poems, this one is an oracle, and the reader can hear personally framed answers from the mouth of the cave. Interpretation, too, is confessional, the poetry of meaning.
The heavy Bear is alcohol.
This poem is about Schwartz’s battle with alcoholism.