INTRODUCTION from New Poems in
General
The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople-- it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs. Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying--
you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now'and now is much to busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included.
Life,for mostpeople,simply isn't. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by "living"? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain's a mammal. Mostpeople's wives could spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes.
-luckily for us,a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving,the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality,the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman is a king,hasn't a wheel to stand on. What their synthetic not to mention transparent majesty, mrsandmr collective foetus,would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn't a undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation,or a transcedentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex,a naturally homogenous,citizen of immorality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture,his any birth of breathing,insults perfected inframortally milleniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything,he is democracy;he is alive:he is ourselves.
Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush "tie it to my hand"--
nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening,innocent spontaneaous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are amoung the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have;only to grow.
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question
By
e.e. cummings
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Other poems by e.e. cummings:
- !blac... (1)
- "Gay" is the captivating cognomen
- (and i imagine... (XII)
- (Me up at does)
- (will you teach a... (12)
- )when what hugs stopping earth than silent is... (
- 1(a... (a leaf falls on loneliness)
- 2 little whos
- a light Out)
- a man who had fallen among thieves
- a pretty a day
- a total stranger one black day
- all ignorance toboggans into know
- All in green went my love riding
- am was.
- anyone lived in a pretty how town
- as freedom is a breakfastfood
- because i love you)last night
- between the breasts
- but if a living dance upon dead minds
- but the other
- dead every enourmous piece
- Doveglion
- dying is fine)but Death
- ecco a letter starting"dearest we"
- enter no
- Epithalamion
- Fame Speaks
- fl... (2)
- flotsam and jetsam
- FOREWARD, is 5
- gee i like to think of dead
- guilt is the cause of more disorders
- hate blows a bubble of despair into
- Humanity i love you
- I Am A Beggar Always
- i am a little church
- i am so glad and very
- i carry your heart with me
- i go to this window
- i have found what you are like
- i like my body when it is with your
- i shall imagine life
- i sing of Olaf glad and big
- i thank you God for most this amazing
- if i have made,my lady,intricate
- if I should sleep with a lady called death
- if there are any heavens my mother will
- if you like my poems let them
- in a middle of a room
- in Just-
- in spite of everything
- in time of daffodils
- into the strenuous briefness
- INTRODUCTION from New Poems
- it is at moments after I have dreamed
- it may not always be so
- Jehovah buried,Satan dead,
- l(a
- lily has a rose
- listen... (III)
- Little Tree
- love is a place... (58)
- maggie and milly and molly and may
- Marianne Moore (35)
- may i feel said he
- may my heart always be open to little... (19)
- moan... (7)
- mrs... (15)
- my father moved through dooms of love
- my love is building a building... (XII)
- my mind is... (XXV)
- my sweet old etcetera... (X)
- n(o)w...
- next to of course god america i... (III)
- nobody loses all the time (X)
- nobody loved this... (4)
- nothing false and possible is love... (XXXIV)
- Now i lay(with everywhere around)... (44)
- now is a ship... (9)
- now what were motionless move(exists no... (89)
- O sweet spontaneous
- of all the blessings which to man... (IV)
- Of Nicolette
- once like a spark... (XXIV)
- ordinary wind is winding(cold face blush
- Picasso... (XXIII)
- pity this busy monster,manunkind... (XIV)
- Poem, Or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal
- proud of his scientific attitude... (13)
- r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
- red-rag and pink-flag... (11)
- Seeker Of Truth
- she being Brand... (XIX)
- silence... (40)
- since feeling is first... (VII)
- six... (21)
- Skating (4)
- Snow
- Sometimes I Am Alive Because With
- somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
- speaking of love(of... (LV)
- spoke joe to jack... (10)
- Spring is like a perhaps hand
- spring omnipotent goddess Thou
- suppose... (VIII)
- supposing i dreamed this)... (IX)
- the boys i mean are not refined
- the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
- the Noster was a ship of swank... (8)
- the way to hump a cow is not... (14)
- there is a here and... (19)
- this evangelist... (XXIX)
- this is the garden: colours come and go,... (IX)
- Thy fingers make early flowers of... (IV)
- Tumbling-hair/ picker of buttercups/ violets... (V
- up into the silence the green... (41)
- voices to voices,lip to lip... (XXXIII)
- warped this perhapsy... (9)
- what if a much of a which of a wind... (XX)
- when faces called flowers float out of the ground.
- when god lets my body be
- when hair falls off and eyes blur And... (L)
- when life is quite through with... (II)
- when serpents bargain for the right to squirm... (
- who sharpens every dull... (26)
- why did you go... (IV)
- yes is a pleasant country... (XXXVIII)
- yonder deadfromtheneckup graduate... (V)
- you being in love... (XII)
- you said Is (XIII)
- you shall above all things... (22)
- youful... (17)
- your little voice... (I)
