Poetry Archives

Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish

Delmore Schwartz

I should have been a plumber fixing drains.
And mending pure white bathtubs for the great Diogenes
(who scorned all lies, all liars, and all tyrannies),

And then, perhaps, he would bestow on me—majesty!
(O modesty aside, forgive my fallen pride, O hidden
      majesty,
The lamp, the lantern, the lucid light he sought for

                  All too often—sick humanity!)

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