from e e cummings: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
This poem refers to many things on my mind today: it is April Fool's day. Spring is having a difficult birth this year [snow flurries yesterday] and I have just heard about the death of someone I knew and worked with at certain period in my life. Over the weekend I heard, too, of the end of a business I worked for some 25 years and talked with the owner about the distressing circumstances leading to closing the business. This poem that I haven't read for a few years was the one the poetry anthology I picked up opened to -- it seemed one of those moments of synchronicity that, when happy I like to call serendipity, and have no name for on a morning like this. I simply read a poet's thoughts and marvel at all that can be said in so few words.
4 comments:
I agree. It's a wonderful poem. I love poetry month. Last year it inspired me to write a poem a day. Maybe I'll try that again. Thanks for reminding me.
Writing a poem a day is a wonderful idea, Kass. Maybe you've inspired me -- one month I was challenged to write a poem a day -- I think I got one good poem, which I figure is pretty good odds, out of 31.
I always found e.e. cummings to be a most challenging/frustrating poet. The first poem of his I encountered was "anyone lived in a pretty how town." I swear I had to think on it a good long while.
And you know what? It, too, kinda fits your post today.
(Word Verification: "plerbon" Not a word but it should be.)
Sometimes I give up on cummings but other times he hits be between the eyes immediately.
Sometimes I've kept a list of those word identification non-words and thought of writing a poem or story using them -- so many look like real words.
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