100 Selected Poems

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It's always our self we find in the sea.

when man determined to destroy himself he picked the was of shall and finding only why smashed it into because

Love is the whole and more than all.

Always it’s Spring)and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.

What if a dawn of a doom of a dream bites this universe in two, peels forever out of his grave, and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?

i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any---lifted from the no of all nothing---human merely being doubt unimaginably You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Nobody loses all the time.

the poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople... you and i are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee , has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty . how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring)

my blood approves, and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom

god's terrible face brighter than a spoon collects the image of one fatal word; so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon) resembles something that has not occurred: i am a birdcage without any bird a collar looking for a dog a kiss without lips;a prayer lacking any knees but something beats within my shirt to prove he is undead who living noone is. I have never loved you dear as now i love.

for every mile the feet go the heart goes nine

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 w ar earthquakes famine or the ex prince of whoses diving into a whatses to rescue miss nobody's probably handbag) because i say that's not swell (get me) babe not (understand me) lousy kid that's something else my sweet (i feel that's true)

i St ep into the not merely immeasurable into the mightily alive the dear beautiful eternal night

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 breasts 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

...we're a mystery which will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before...

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any–lifted from the no of all nothing–human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

Accept all happiness from me. Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands. in the lost lands

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

lady through whose profound and fragile lips the sweet small clumsy feet of April came into the ragged meadow of my soul.

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,i say if this should be— you of my heart,send me a little word; that i may go unto him,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

[you shall above all things be glad and young] you shall above all things be glad and young For if you’re young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become. Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need: i can entirely her only love whose any 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 that way 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 E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems ‎(Grove Press, January 10, 1994)

gee i like to think of dead" gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper firmer since darker than little round water at one end of the well       it's too cool to be crooked and it's too firm to be hard but it's sharp and it's thick and it loves,      every old thing falls in rosebugs and jackknives and kittens and pennies they all sit there looking at each other having the fastest time because they've never met before dead's more even than how many ways of sitting on your head your unnatural hair has in the morning dead's clever too like POF goes the alarm off and the little striker having the best time tickling away every- body's brain so everybody just puts out their finger and they stuff the poor thing all full of fingers dead has a smile like the nicest man you've never met who maybe winks at you in a streetcar and you pretend you don't but really you do see and you are My how glad he winked and hope he'll do it again or if it talks about you somewhere behind your back it makes your neck feel all pleasant and stoopid      and if dead says may i have this one and was never intro- duced you say Yes because you know you want it to dance with you and it wants to and it can dance and Whocares dead's fine like hands do you see that water flowerpots in windows but they live higher in their house than you so that's all you see but you don't want to dead's happy like the way underclothes All so differ- ently solemn and inti and sitting on one string dead never says my dear,Time for your musiclesson and you like music and to have somebody play who can but you know you never can and why have to? dead's nice like a dance where you danced simple hours and you take all your prickley-clothes off and squeeze- into-largeness without one word      and you lie still as anything      in largeness and this largeness begins to give you,the dance all over again and you,feel all again all over the way men you liked made you feel when they touched you(but that's not all)because largeness tells you so you can feel what you made,men feel when,you touched,them dead's sorry like a thistlefluff-thing which goes land- ing away all by himself on somebody's roof or some- thing where who-ever-heard-of-growing and nobody expects you to anyway dead says come with me he says(and why ever not)into the round well and see the kitten and the penny and the jackknife and the rosebug                                 and you say Sure you say  (like that)  sure i'll come with you you say for i like kittens i do and jackknives i do and pennies i do and rosebugs i do E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems. (Grove Press, January 10, 1994) Originally published 1954.

King Christ,this world is all aleak; and lifepreservers there are none: and waves which only He may walk Who dared to call Himself a man.

Without a heart the animal is very very kind so kind it wouldn’t like a soul and couldn’t use a mind.

love’s to giving as to keeping’s give; as yes is to if,love is to yes

a man who had fallen among thieves lay by the roadside on his back dressed in fifteenthrate ideas wearing a round jeer for a hat fate per a somewhat more than less emancipated evening had in return for consciousness endowed him with a changeless grin whereon a dozen staunch and leal citizens did graze at pause then fired by hypercivic zeal sought newer pastures or because swaddled with a frozen brook of pinkest vomit out of eyes which noticed nobody he looked as if he did not care to rise one hand did nothing on the vest its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt while the mute trouserfly confessed a button solemnly inert. Brushing from whom the stiffened puke i put him all into my arms and staggered banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars

the blond absence of any program except last and always and first to live makes unimportant what i and you believe;