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100 Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings
(the phonograph’s voice like a keen spider skipping

quickly over patriotic swill.
The,negress,in the,rocker by the,curb,tipping

and tipping,the flocks of pigeons.  And the skil-

ful loneliness,and the rather fat
man in bluishsuspenders half-reading the
Evening Something
                      in the normal window.  and a cat.

A cat waiting for god knows makes me

wonder if i’m alive(eye pries,

not open.  Tail stirs.)  And the. fire-escapes—
the night. makes me wonder if,if i am
the face of a baby smeared with beautiful jam

or

  my invincible Nearness rapes

laughter from your preferable,eyes
the poem her belly marched through me as
one army.   From her nostrils to her feet

she smelled of silence.   The inspired cleat

of her glad leg pulled into a sole mass
my separate lusts
                            her hair was like a gas
evil to feel.   Unwieldy….

                                        the bloodbeat
in her fierce laziness tried to repeat
a trick of syncopation Europe has

—. One day i felt a mountain touch me where
I stood (maybe nine miles off).   It was spring

sun-stirring.   sweetly to the mangling air
muchness of buds mattered.   a valley spilled
its tickling river in my eyes,
                                              the killed

world wriggled like a twitched string.
there is a
moon sole
in the blue
night

      amorous of waters
tremulous,
blinded with silence the
undulous heaven yearns where

in tense starlessness
anoint with ardor
the yellow lover

stands in the dumb dark
svelte
and
urgent

        (again
love i slowly
gather
of thy languorous mouth the

thrilling
flower)
the rose
is dying the
lips of an old man ******

the petals
hush

mysteriously invisible mourners move
with prose faces and sobbing,garments
The symbol of the rose

motionless
with grieving feet and
wings
mounts

against the margins of steep song
a stallion swetneess    ,the

lips of an old man ******
the petals.
the sky a silver
dissonance by the correct
fingers of April
resolved

              into a
clutter of trite jewels

now like a moth with stumbling

wings flutters and flops along the
grass collides with trees and
houses and finally,
butts into the river
the
     sky
           was
can    dy    lu
minous
            edible
spry
        pinks shy
lemons
greens    coo    1 choc
olate
s.

  un    der,
  a    lo
co
mo
      tive        s  pout
                               ing
                                     vi
                                     o
                                     lets
the wind is a Lady with
bright slender eyes(who

moves)at sunset
and who—touches—the
hills without any reason

(i have spoken with this
indubitable and green person “Are
You the Wind?” “Yes” “why do you touch flowers
as if they were unalive,as

if They were ideas?” “because,sir
things which in my mind blossom will
stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise,appear
capable of fragility and indecision

—do not suppose these
without any reason and otherwise
roses and mountains
different from the i am who wanders

imminently across the renewed world”
to me said the)wind being A lady in a green
dress,who;touches:the fields
(at sunset)
this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.
Thy fingers make early flowers
of all things.
thy hair mostly the hours love:
a smoothness which
sings,saying
(though love be a day)
do not fear,we will go amaying.

thy whitest feet crisply are straying.
Always
thy moist eyes are at kisses playing,
whose strangeness much
says;singing
(though love be a day)
for which girl art thou flowers bringing?

To be thy lips is a sweet thing
and small.
Death,thee i call rich beyond wishing
if this thou catch,
else missing.
(though love be a day
and life be nothing,it shall not stop kissing).
Tumbling-hair
              picker of buttercups
                                   violets
dandelions
And the big bullying daisies
                             through the field wonderful
with eyes a little sorry
Another comes
              also picking flowers
unto thee i
burn incense
the bowl crackles
upon the gloom arise purple pencils

fluent spires of fragrance
the bowl
seethes
a flutter of stars

a turbulence of forms
delightful with indefinable flowering,
the air is
deep with desirable flowers

i think
thou lovest incense
for in the ambiguous faint aspirings
the indolent frail ascensions,

of thy smile rises the immaculate
sorrow
of thy low
hair flutter the level litanies

unto thee i burn
incense,over the dim smoke
straining my lips are vague with
ecstasy my palpitating ******* inhale the

slow
supple
flower
of thy beauty,my heart discovers thee

unto
whom i
burn
olbanum
when god lets my body be

from each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes

will lay between their little *******
my strong fingers beneath the snow

into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
with the bulge and nuzzle of the sea
when i have thought of you somewhat too
much and am become perfectly and
simply Lustful….sense a gradual stir
of beginning muscle,and what it will do
to me before shutting….understand
i love you….feel your suddenly body reach
for me with a speed of white speech

(the simple instant of perfect hunger
Yes)
        how beautifully swims
the fooling world in my huge blood,
cracking brains A swiftlyenormous light
—and furiously puzzling through,prismatic,whims,
the chattering self perceives with hysterical fright

a comic tadpole wriggling in delicious mud
when life is quite through with
and leaves say alas,
much is to do
for the swallow,that closes
a flight in the blue;

when love’s had his tears out,
perhaps shall pass
a million years
(while a bee dozes
on the poppies, the dears;

when all’s done and said,and
under the grass
lies her head
by oaks and roses
deliberated.)
when my love comes to see me it’s
just a little like music,a
little more like curving colour(say
orange)
          against silence,or darkness….

the coming of my love emits
a wonderful smell in my mind,

you should see when i turn to find
her how my least heart-beat becomes less.
And then all her beauty is a vise

whose stilling lips ****** suddenly me,

but of my corpse the tool her smile makes something
suddenly luminous and precise

—and then we are I and She….

what is that the hurdy-gurdy’s playing
when the proficient poison of sure sleep
bereaves us of our slow tranquillities

and He without Whose favour nothing is
(being of men called Love)upward doth leap
from the mute hugeness of depriving deep

with thunder of those hungering wings of His,

into the lucent and large signories
—i shall not smile,beloved;i shall not weep:

when from the less-than-whiteness of thy face
(whose eyes inherit vacancy)will time
extract his inconsiderable doom,
when these thy lips beautifully embrace
nothing
          and when thy bashful hands assume

silence beyond the mystery of rhyme
when thou hast taken thy last applause,and when
the final curtain strikes the world away,
leaving to shadowy silence and dismay
that stage which shall not know thy smile again,
lingering a little while i see thee then
ponder the tinsel part they let thee play;
i see the large lips vivid, the face grey,
and silent smileless eyes of Magdalen.
The lights have laughed their last;without,the street
darkling awaiteth her whose feet have trod
the silly souls of men to golden dust:
she pauses on the lintel of defeat,
her heart breaks in a smile—and she is Lust….

mine also, little painted poem of god
when you went away it was morning
(that is,big horses;light feeling up
streets;heels taking derbies (where?) a pup
hurriedly hunched over swill;one butting

trolley imposingly empty;snickering
shop doors unlocked by white-grub
faces) clothes in delicate hubbub

as you stood thinking of anything,

maybe the world….But i have wondered since
isn’t it odd of you really to lie
a sharp agreeable flower between my

amused legs
                kissing with little dints

of april,making the obscene shy
******* tickle,laughing when i wilt and wince
whereas by dark really released,the modern
flame of her indomitable body
uses a careful fierceness.  Her lips study
my head gripping for a decision:burn
the terrific fingers which grapple and joke
on my passionate anatomy
oh yes!  Large legs pinch,toes choke—
hair-thin strands of magic agony
….by day this lady in her limousine

oozes in fashionable traffic,just
a halfsmile (for society’s sweet sake)
in the not too frail lips almost discussed;
between her and ourselves a nearly-opaque
perfume disinterestedly obscene.
Where’s Madge then,
Madge and her men?
buried with
Alice in her hair,
(but if you ask the rain
he’ll not tell where.)

beauty makes terms
with time and his worms,
when loveliness
says sweetly Yes
to wind and cold;
and how much earth
is Madge worth?
Inquire of the flower that sways in the autumn
she will never guess.
but i know

my heart fell dead before.
Who
Who
Who
      threw the silver dollar up into the tree?

                                                    I didn’t said the little
lady who sews and grows every day paler-paler she sits sewing and grow-
ing and that’s the truth,
who threw

            the ripe melon into the tree?you
                                                got me said the smoke who
runs the elevator but I bet two bits come seven come eleven mm make
the world safe for democracy it never fails and that’s a fact;

who threw the

bunch of violets
                    into the tree?I dunno said the silver dog,    with ripe
eyes and wagged his tail that’s the god’s own

and the moon kissed the little lady on her paler-paler face and said
never mind,you’ll find
                           But the moon creeped into the pink hand of the
smoke that shook the ivories
                                and she said said She Win and you won’t be
sorry   And The Moon camelalong-along to the waggy silver dog
and the moon came
and the Moon said into his Ripe Eyes
                                          and the moon
                                                          Smiled

                                                          ,so
who knows if the moon’s
a baloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky—filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their baloon,
why then
we’d go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited,where

always
            it’s
                   Spring)and everyone’s
in love and flowers pick themselves
who’s most afraid of death?thou
                                  art of him
utterly afraid,i love of thee
(beloved)this

                 and truly i would be
near when his scythe takes crisply the whim
of thy smoothness.  and mark the fainting
murdered petals.  with caving stem.

But of all most would i be one of them

round the hurt heart which do so frailly cling….)
i who am but imperfect in my fear

Or with thy mind against my mind,to hear
nearing our hearts’ irrevocable play—
through the mysterious high futile day

an enormous stride
                      (and drawing thy mouth toward

my mouth,steer our lost bodies carefully downward.
why did you go
little fourpaws?
you forgot to shut
your big eyes.

where did you go?
like little kittens
are all the leaves
which open in the rain.

little kittens who
are called spring,
is what we stroke
maybe asleep?

do you know?or maybe did
something go away
ever so quietly
when we weren’t looking.
will suddenly trees leap from winter and will

the stabbing music of your white youth
wounded by my arms’ bothness
(say a twilight lifting the fragile skill
of new leaves’ voices,and sharp lips of spring
simply joining with the wonderless
city’s sublime cheap distinct mouth)

do the exact human comely thing?

(or will the fleshless moments go and go

across this dirtied pane where softly preys
the grey and perpendicular Always—
or possibly there drift a pulseless blur
of paleness;
                the unswift mouths of snow
insignificantly whisper….
writhe and
gape of tortured

   perspective
   rasp and graze of splintered

normality
               crackle and
               sag
   of planes          clamors of
   collision
   collapse         As

peacefully,
lifted
into the awful beauty
                                  of sunset

                                  the young city
putting off dimension with a blush
enters
the becoming garden of her agony
you asked me to come:it was raining a little,
and the spring;a clumsy brightness of air
wonderfully stumbled above the square,
little amorous-tadpole people wiggled

battered by stuttering pearl,
                                leaves jiggled
to the jigging fragrance of newness
—and then.  My crazy fingers liked your dress
….your kiss,your kiss was a distinct brittle

flower,and the flesh crisp set
my love-tooth on edge.  So until light
each having each we promised to forget—

wherefore is there nothing left to guess:
the cheap intelligent thighs,the electric trite
thighs;the hair stupidly priceless.
your little voice
                    Over the wires came leaping
and i felt suddenly
dizzy
     With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
                             or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
                          stars and the Humorous
                                                  moon
dear girl
How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
                                            over time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
          your voice
yours is the music for no instrument
yours the preposterous colour unbeheld

—mine the unbought contemptuous intent
till this our felsh merely shall be excelled
by speaking flower
                      (if I have made songs

it does not greatly matter to the sun,
nor will rain care
                      cautiously who prolongs
unserious twilight)Shadows have begun

the hair’s worm huge,ecstatic,rathe….

yours are the poems i do not write.

In this at least we have got a bulge on death,
silence,and the keenly musical light

of sudden nothing….la bocca mia “he
kissed wholly trembling”

                              or so thought the lady.

— The End —