Poet - Cummings

e.e. cummings

Doveglion | May I Feel Said He | Of Nicolette | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled | Untitled

he isn't looking at anything
he isn't looking for something
he isn't looking
he is seeing

what

not something outside himself
not anything inside himself
but himself

himself how

not as some anyone
not as any someone

only as a noone(who is everyone)

May I feel said He

may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccccome? said he
ummm said she)
you're devine! said he
(you are Mine said she)

dreaming in marble all the castle lay
like some gigantic ghost-flower born of night
blossoming in white towers to the moon,
soft sighed the passionate darkness to the tune
of tiny troubadours, and (phantom-white)
dumb-blooming boughs let fall their glorious snows
and the unearthy sweetness of a rose
swam upward from the troubled heart of May;

a Winged Passion woke and one by one
there fell upon the night, like angel's tears,
the syllabes of that mysterious prayer,
and as an opening lily drowsy-fair
(when from her couch of poppy petals peers
the sleepy morning) gently draws apart
her curtains, and lays bare her jewels by the sun,

so one high shining tower (which as glass
turned light to flame and blazed with snowy fire)
unfolding, gave the moon a nymphlike face,
a form whose snowy symmetry of grace
haunted the limbs as music haunts a lyre,
a creature of white hands, who letting fall
a thread of lustre from the castle wall
glided, a drop of radiance, to the grass-

shunning the sudden moonbeam's treacherous snare
she sought the harbouring dark, and (catching up
her delicate silk) all white, with shining feet,
went forth into the dew: roght wildly beat
her heart at every kiss of daisy-cup,
and from hercheek the beauteous colour went
with ever bough that reverently bent
to touch the yellow wonder of her hair.

"think of it:not so long ago
this was a village"
"yes;i know"

"of human beings who prayed and sang:,br> or am i wrong?"
"no,you're not wrong"

"and worked like hell six days out of seven"
"to die as they lived:in the hope of heaven"

"didn't two roads meet here?"
"they did;
and over yonder a schoolhouse stood"

"do i remember a girl with blue-
sky eyes and sun-yellow hair?"
"do you?"

"absolutely"
"that's very odd,
for i've never forgotten one frecklfaced lad'

"what could have happened to her and him?"
"maybe they walked and called it a drea,"

"in this dream were there green and gold
meadows?"
"through which a lazy brook strolled"

"wonder if clover still smells that way;
up in the mow"
"full of newmown hay"

"and the shadows and sounds and silences"
"Yes,a barn could be a magical place"

"nothing's the same:is it"
"something still
remains,my friend;and always will"

"namely?"
"if any woman knows,
one man in a million ought to guess"

"what of the dreams that never die?"
"turn to your left at the end of the sky"

"where are the girls whose breasts begin?"
"under the boys who fish with a pin"

look
my fingers,which
touched you
and your warmth and crisp
littleness
-see?do not resemble my
fingers. My wrists hands
which held carefully the soft silence
of you(and your body
smile eyes feet hands)
are different
from what they were. My arms
in which all of you lay folded
queitly,like a
leaf or flower
newly made by Spring
Herself,are not my
arms. I do not recognise
as myself this which i find before
me in a mirror. i do
not believe
i have seen these things;
someone whom you love
and who is slenderer
taller than
myself has entered and become such
lips as i use to talk with,
a new person is alive and
gestures with my
or it is perhaps you
with my voice
are
playing.

wherelings whenlings
(daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky

-endlings of isn't
shall never
begin
to begin to

imagine how(only are shall be were
dawn dark rain snow rain
-bow &
a

moon
's whis-
per
in sunset

or thrushes toward dusk among whippoorwills or
tree field rock hollyrock forest brook chickadee
mountain. Mountain)
whycoloured worlds of because do

not stand against yes which is built by
forever & sunsmell
(sometimes a wonder
of wild roses

sometimes)
with north
over
the barn

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientigic
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying

(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death

sonnet entitled how to run the world)

A always don't there B being no such thing
for C can't casts no shadow D drink and

E eat of her voice in whose silence the music of spring
lives F feel opens but huts understand
G gladly forget little having less

with every least each most remembering
H highest fly only the flag that's furled

(sestet entitled grass is flesh or swim
who can and bathe who must or any dream
means more than sleep as more than know means guess)

I item i immaculately owe
dying one life and will my rest to these

children building this rainman out of snow

conceive a man,should he have anything
would give a little more than it away

(his autumn's winter being summer's spring
who moved by standing in november's may)
from whose(if loud most howish time derange

the silent whys of such a deathlessness)
rememberance might no patient mind unstrange
learn(nor could all earth's rotting scholars guess
that life shall not for living find the rule)

and dark beginnings are his luminous ends
who far less lonely than a fire is cool
took bedfellows for moons mountains for friends

-open your thighs to fate and(if you can
withholding nothing)World,conceive a man

what time is it?it is by every star
a different time,and each most falsely true;
os so subhuman superminds declare

-nor all their times encompass me and you:

when are we never,but forever now
(hosts of eternity;not guests of seem)
believe me,dear,clocks have enough to do

without confusing timelessness and time.

Time cannot children,poets,lovers tell-
measure imagine,mystery,a kiss
-not though mankind would rather know how than feel;

mistrusting utterly that timelessness

whose absence would make your whole life and my
(and infinite our)merely to undie

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly

we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indded dear
nothing of the kind.

(So, when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each other kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kiss kiss you and to
kiss me)

the trick of finding what you didn't lose
(existing's tricky:but to live's a gift)
the teachable imposture of always
arriving at the place you never left

(and i refer to thinking)rests upon
a dismal misconception;namely that
some neither ape nor angel called a man
is measured by his quote eye cue unquote.

Much better than which,every woman who's
(despite the ultramachinations of
some loveless infraworld)a woman knows;
and certain men quite possibly may have

shal we say guessed?"
"we shall" quoth gifted she:
and played the hostess to my morethanme

all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:,br> but winter's not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?

all history's a winter sport or three:
but were it five,i'd still insist that all
history is too small for even me;
for me and you,exceedlingly too small.

Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
-tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
we'll move away still further:into now.

sometimes i am alive because with
me her alert treelike body sleeps
which i will feel slowly sharpening
becoming distinct with love slowly,
who in my shoulder sinks sweetly teeth
until we shall attain the Springsmelling
intense large togethercoloured instant

the moment pleasantly frightful

when, her mouth suddenly rising,wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrugs and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the
upward singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)

n w
O
h
S
LoW
h
myGODye
s s

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs where O.

K.)I went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the heel)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on,p> the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allof her tremB
-ling
toa;dead.

stand-
;Still)

(ponder,darling,these busted statues
of yon motheaten forum be aware
notice what hath remained
-the stone cringes
cligning to the stone,how obsolete

lips utter their extant smile.....
remark

resist Them Greediest Paws of careful
time all of which is extremely
unimportant)whereas Life

matters if or

when the your- and my-
idle vertical worthless
self unite in a peculiarly
momentary

partnership(to instigate
constructive
Horizontal
business....even so,let us make haste
-consider well this ruined aqueduct

lady,
which used to lead something into somewhere)

O It's Nice To Get Up In,the slipshod mucous kiss
of her riant belly's fooling bore
-When The Sun Begins To(with a phrasing crease
of hot subliminal lips,as if a score
of youngest angels suddenly should stretch neat necks
just to see how always squirms
the skilful mystery of Hell)me suddenly

grips in chuckles of supreme sex.

In The Good Old Summer Time.
My gorgeous bullet in tickling intuitive flight
aches,just,simply,into,her. Thirsty
stirring. (Must be summer. Hush. Worms.)

But It's Nicer To Lie In Bed
-eh? I'm

not. Again. Hush. God. Please hold. Tight

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with suprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge-my girl's tall
and taut,with thin legs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.

being to timelessness as it's to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer?all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad?only their smallest joy's
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

-do lovers love?why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools, all's well

yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year

both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear

love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)

your homecoming will be my homecoming-

my selves go with you,only i remain;
a shadow phantom effigy or seeming
(an almost someone always who's noone)

a noone who,till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your mourning

feeling their stars have risen through your skies:

so,in how merciful love's own name,linger
no more than selfless i can quite endure
the absence of that moment when a stranger
takes in his arms my very lifes who's you

-when all fears hopes beliefs doubts disappear.
Everywhere and joy's perfect wholeness we're.

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find

silently if,out of not knowable
night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess
(only which is this world)more my life does
not leap than with the mystery your smile

sings of ir(spiralling as luminous
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss

losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow's own joys and hoping's fears

yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's returns
-you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars.

it is long since my heart has been with yours

shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town-

that i have perhaps forgotten
how,always(from
these hurrying crudities
of bloos and flesh)Love coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

-after which our seperatinf selves become museums
filled with skillfully stuffed memories

O Distinct
Lady of my unkempt adoration
if i have made
a fragile certain

song under the window of your soul
it is not like any songs
(the singers the others
they have been failthful

to many things and which
die
i have been sometimes true
to Nothing and which lives

they were fond of the handsome
moon never spoke ill of the
pretty stars and to
the serene the complicated

and the obvious
they were faithful
and which i despise
frankly

admitting i have been true
only to the noise of worms. under the unaccountable sun)

Distinct Lady
swiftly take
my fragile certain song
that we may watch together

how behind the doomed
exact smile of life's
placid obscure palpable
carnival where to a normal

melody of probable violins dance
the square virtues and the oblong sins
perfectly
gesticulate the accurate

strenuous lips of incorruptible
Nothing under the ample
sun,under the insufficient
day under the noise of worms

cherie
the very,picturesque,lastDay
(when all the clocks have lost their jobs and god
sits up quickly to judge the Big Sinners)
he will have something large and fluffy to say
to me. All the pale grumbling wings
of his greater angels will cease:as that Curse

bounds neat-ly from the angry wad

of his forehead(then fiends with pitchforkthings
will catch and toss me lovingly to
and fro.) Last,should you look,you
'll find me prone upon the flame,

which seethes in a beautiful way
upward; with someone by the name
of Paolo passing the time of day.

along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot,whispering like a drunken man

who(at a certain corner,suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.

awake
being not asleep,elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded:but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner

-"Ici?"-"Ah non,mon cheri;il fait trop froid"-
they are gone:along these gardens move a wind bringing
rain and leaves,filling the air with fear
and sweetness....pauses. (Halfwhispering....halfsinging

stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)

when you were in Paris we met here
you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if yu are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose and mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and(in his mercy)your true lover spare:
for thatway knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,
am i seperated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping poppets of a dream? oh i mean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure-you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
-that since and if you disappear
solemnly
myself
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile
and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend"
they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
-what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like, for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love, love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love."

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

Seeing how the limp building string
of your smile over his body squirms
kissingly, i will bring your 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 worth the whole,
an inch of nothing for your soul.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
and death i think is no parenthesis.

my love is building a building
around you, a frail slippery
house, a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning
of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison (building that and this into Thus,
around the recless magic of your mouth)
my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and (as i guess)
when Farmer Death (whom fairies hate)shall
crumble the mouth flower fleet
He'll not my tower,
laborious, casual
where the surrounded smile
hangs
breathless

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

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds

i have found what you are like
the rain,
(Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields
easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike
the air in utterable coolness
deads of green thrilling light
with thinned
newfragile yellows.
lurch and press
-in the woods
which
stutter
and
sing
And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms; but
i should rather than anything
have (almost when hugeness will shut
quietly) almost,
your kiss

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you do, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate ( for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

but if a living dance upon dead minds
why, it is love; but at the earliest spear
of sun perfectly should disappear
moon's utmost magic, or stones speak or one
name control more incredible splendor than
our merely universe, love's also there:
and being here imprisoned, tortured here
love everywhere exploding maims and blinds
(but surely does not forget, perish, sleep
cannot be photographed, measured; disdains
the trivial labelling of punctual brains...
-Who wields a poem huger than the grave?
from only Whom shall time no refuge keep
though all the weird worlds must be opened?

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 (if he should not sing)

how much more than enough for both of us
darling. And if i sing you are my voice.

(because I love you) last night

clothed in sealace
appeared to me
your mind drifting
with chuckling rubbish
of pearl weed coral and stones;

lifted, and (before my
eyes sinking) inward, fled; softly
your face smile breasts gargled
by death: drowned only

again carefully through deepness to rise
these your wrists
thighs feet hands

poisoning
to again utterly disappear;
rushing gently swiftly creeping
through my dreams last
night, all of your
body with its spirit floated
(clothed only in
the tide's acute weaving murmur.

it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved should touch
another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;
if this should be, isay if this should be-
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto himm and take his hands,
saying, Accept all happiness from me.
then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

i like my body when it is with your
body. it is so quite new a thing.
muscles better and nerves more,
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like it's how. i like to feel the spine
of your body and it's bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and agian and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh.....and eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if you wish to be close to me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

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