Sunday, October 14, 2012

hopes dance best on bald men's hair





[as freedom is a breakfastfood]

E.E. Cummings

as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
—long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald mens hair
and every finger is a toe
and any courage is a fear
—long enough and just so long
will the impure think all things pure
and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind
and robins never welcome spring
nor flatfolk prove their world is round
nor dingsters die at break of dong
and common’s rare and millstones float
—long enough and just so long
tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words but joy’s the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
—time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough


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Born 114 years ago today. No, I don't read much today, but he was a gateway poet for me: I wouldn't read what and as I read today if I hadn't read Cummings when I was young.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you kindly for the reminder of Cummings' life and work as compelling evidence that other people are stupid.

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  2. Oops, meant to take that down - I was using it as a bookmark for this morning when I got frustrated at c/p-ing poetry into fucking blaager last night at midnight and didn't feel like typing the poem then.

    And I'll pass this on at L's request by email: "So that's why you've been posting birthdays for all nine years of your shitty blog."

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  3. Mathematical

    and yet...

    perhaps the pivot is the word seem and a seam that run throughout and perhaps a multiplicity of meanings

    Millstones DO float,

    in dreams

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  4. I was actually serious. Not that you (or L) weren't. Cummings' body of work and the pearl-clutching portion of the contemporary reaction to it really do stand as a monument to the notion that there is nothing new under the sun, as far as American stupid. It's an underlying tenet of my benevolent Hamiltonian liberalism.

    ReplyDelete