E. E. Cummings

woman this
my body
for it has
lain with empty arms
upon the giddy hills
to dream of you,
approve these
firm unsated
eyes
which have beheld

night’s speechless carnival
the painting
of the dark
with meteors

streaming from playful
immortal hands
the bursting
of the wafted stars

(in time to come you shall
remember of this night amazing
ecstasies slowly,
in the glutted

heart fleet
flower terrible
memories
shall
rise, slowly
return upon the
red elected lips
scaleless visions)
-E. E. Cummings

walk the autumn long;
the last flower in whose hair,
they lips are cold with songs

for which is
first to wither, to pass?
shallowness of sunlight
falls, and cruelly,
across the grass
Comes the
moon

love, walk the
autumn
love, for the last
flower in the hair withers;
thy hair is acold with
dreams,
love thou art frail

-walk the longness of autumn
smile dustily to the people,
for winter
who crookedly care.
-E. E. Cummings

dead every enourmous piece
of nonsense which itself must call
a state submicroscopic is-
compared with pitying terrible
some alive individual

ten centuries of original soon
or make it ten times ten are more
than not entitled to complain
-plunged in eternal now if who’re
by the five nevers of a lear
-E. E. Cummings

?o
baby i
wouldn’t like
Death if Death
were
good:for
when(instead of stopping to think)you
begin to feel of it,dying
‘s miraculous
why?be
cause dying is
perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but
Death
is strictly
scientific
& artificial &
evil & legal)
we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death
-E. E. Cummings

ecco a letter starting”dearest we”
unsigned:remarkably brief but covering
one complete miracle of nearest far

“i cordially invite me to become
noone except yourselves r s v p”

she cannot read or write,la moon. Employs
a very crazily how clownlike that
this quickly ghost scribbling from there to where

-name unless i’m mistaken chauvesouris-
whose grammar is atrocious;but so what

princess selene doesn’t know a thing
who’s much too busy being her beautiful yes.
The place is now
let us accept
(the time

forever,and

I.
Thou aged unreluctant earth who dost
with quivering continual thighs invite
the thrilling rain the slender paramour
to toy with thy extraordinary lust,
(the sinuous rain which rising from thy bed
steals to his wife the sky and hour by hour
wholly renews her pale flesh with delight)
-immortally whence are the high gods fled?

Speak elm eloquent pandar with thy nod
significant to the ecstatic earth
in token of his coming whom her soul
burns to embrace-and didst thou

even a pencil has fear to
do the posed body luckily made
a pen is dreadfully afraid
of her of this of the smile’s two
eyes.too, since the world’s but
a piece of eminent fragility.
Well and when-Does susceptibility
imply perspicuity, or?
shut
up.
Seeing
seeing her is not
to something or to nothing as much as
being by her seen, which has got
nothing on something as i think,
did you ever hear a jazz
Band?

or unnoise men don’t make soup who drink.
-E. E.

Stand forth, John Keats! On earth thou knew’st me not;
Steadfast through all the storms of passion,thou,
True to thy muse, and virgin to thy vow;
Resigned, if name with ashes were forgot,
So thou one arrow in the gold had’st shot!
I never placed my laurel on thy brow,
But on thy name I come to lay it now,
When thy bones wither in the earthly plot.
Fame is my name. I dwell among the clouds,
Being

the bigness of cannon
is skilful,

bit i have seen
death’s clever enormous voice
which hides in a fragility
of poppies…

i say that sometimes
on these long talkative animals
are laid fists of huger silence

i have seen all the silence
filled with vivid noiseless boys

at Roupy
i have seen
between barrages,

the night utter ripe unspeaking girls.
-E. E. Cummings

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young

pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life’s only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin

comes here a man would have from madame death
nevertheless now and without winter spring?
she’ll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances

i am a beggar always
who begs in your mind

(slightly smiling, patient, unspeaking
with a sign on his
chest
BLIND)yes i

am this person of whom somehow
you are never wholly rid(and who

does not ask for more than
just enough dreams to
live on)
after all, kid

you might as well
toss him a few thoughts

a little love preferably,
anything which you can’t
pass off on other people: for
instance a
plugged promise-

the he will maybe (hearing something
fall into his hat)go wandering
after it with

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a

i am so glad and very
merely my fourth will cure
the laziest self of weary
the hugest sea of shore
so far your nearness reaches
a lucky fifth of you
turns people into eachs
and cowards into grow
our can’ts were born to happen
our mosts have died in more
our twentieth will open
wide a wide open door
we are so both and oneful
night cannot be so sky
sky cannot be so sunful
i am through you so i
-E. E. Cummings

If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn’t a lie,
Life would be delight,-
But things couldn’t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn’t be I.

If earth was heaven, and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I’d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn’t be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt

if I should sleep with a lady called death
get another man with firmer lips
to take your new mouth in his teeth
(hips pumping pleasure into hips).

Seeing how the limp huddling string
of your smile over his body squirms
kissingly, I will bring you every spring
handfuls of little normal worms.

Dress deftly your flesh in stupid stuffs,
phrase the immense weapon of your hair.
Understanding why his eye laughs,
I will bring you every year

something which is

if everything happens that can’t be done
(and anything’s righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there’s nothing as something as one

one hasn’t a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don’t grow)
one’s anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one’s everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and

if i

or anybody don’t
know where it her his

my next meal’s coming from
i say to hell with that
that doesn’t matter (and if

he she it or everybody gets a
bellyful without
lifting my finger i say to hell
with that i

say that doesn’t matter) but
if somebody
or you are beautiful or
deep or generous what
i say is

whistle that
sing that yell that spell
that out big (bigger than cosmic
rays war earthquakes famine or the ex

prince of whoses diving

if i believe
in death be sure
of this
it is

because you have loved me,
moon and sunset
stars and flowers
gold crescendo and silver muting

of seatides
i trusted not,
one night
when in my fingers

drooped your shining body
when my heart
sang between your perfect
breasts

darkness and beauty of stars
was on my mouth petals danced
against my eyes
and down

the singing reaches of
my soul
spoke
the green-

greeting pale-
departing irrevocable
sea
i knew thee death.

and when
i have offered up each fragrant
night, when all my days
shall have before

If I have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body’s whitest song
upon my mind – if I have failed to snare
the glance too shy – if through my singing slips
the very skilful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair

– let the world say “his most wise music stole
nothing from death” –
you

if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries

if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing
-E. E. Cummings

if strangers meet
life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully,once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever

(and so to dark)
-E. E. Cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

swaying over her
(silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved

If you can’t eat you got to
smoke and we aint got

nothing to smoke:come on kid
let’s go to sleep

if you can’t smoke you got to
Sing and we aint got

nothing to sing;come on kid
let’s go to sleep

if you can’t sing you got to
die and we aint got

Nothing to die,come on kid
let’s go to sleep

if you can’t die you got to
dream and we aint got

nothing to dream(come on kid
Let’s go to sleep)
-E.

if you like my poems let them
walk in the evening,a little behind you
then people will say
“Along this road i saw a princess pass
on her way to meet her lover(it was
toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants.”
-E. E. Cummings