Pencil sketch by E. E. Cummings
Houghton Library, Harvard University
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LOVE AND ITS MYSTERIES
DURING THE COURSE of his lifetime, Cummings was married to three of the most beautiful women in America, and most of his love poems are addressed to them. From 1919 to 1924, his emotions were centered on the demure Elaine Orr, whom he married after her divorce from his friend Scofield Thayer. From 1925 to 1932, he was devoted to Anne Barton, former wife of the illustrator Ralph Barton and a lively and witty fashion model, who became his second wife. From 1932 until his death in 1962, he lived happily with Marion Morehouse, an actress, photographer, and fashion model, whom the photographer Edward Steichen judged to have been the most outstanding of all the women who had ever posed for him.
The love poems vary in attitude. The restraint of “O Distinct” derives from Cummings’ self-conscious aim to be different from the traditional troubadour. But the sophisticated view of the Last Judgment and Hell in “chérie” does not detract from its controlled emotional statement that the speaker is ready to suffer damnation for his love, “along the brittle treacherous bright streets” reflects an authentic emotion of longing after an extended separation from Elaine when she was across the sea. The delicate floral metaphors of “somewhere i have never travelled,” which make it one of the most intense of Cummings’ works in his early style, were a tribute to Anne Barton. All but one of the last six in this section were written for Marion Morehouse and there is no literary posturing in them. Their directness, their play with the concept of oneness, and their emphasis on the linguistic affirmation of “yes” gives these poems an unstrained sincerity.
O Distinct
Lady of my unkempt adoration
if i have made
a fragile certain
song under the window of your soul
it is not like any songs
(the singers the others
they have been faithful
to many things and which
die
i have been sometimes true
to Nothing and which lives
they were fond of the handsome
moon never spoke ill of the
pretty stars and to
the serene the complicated
and the obvious
they were faithful
and which i despise,
frankly
admitting i have been true
only to the noise of worms.
in the eligible day
under the unaccountable sun)
Distinct Lady
swiftly take
my fragile certain song
that we may watch together
how behind the doomed
exact smile of life’s
placid obscure palpable
carnival where to a normal
melody of probable violins dance
the square virtues and the oblong sins
perfectly
gesticulate the accurate
strenuous lips of incorruptible
Nothing under the ample
sun,under the insufficient
day under the noise of worms
my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning
of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison,a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)
my love is building a magic,a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)
when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall
crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
laborious,casual
where the surrounded smile
hangs
breathless
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
chérie
the very,picturesque,last Day
(when all the clocks have lost their jobs and god
sits up quickly to judge the Big Sinners)
he will have something large and fluffy to say
to me. All the pale grumbling wings
of his greater angels will cease:as that Curse
bounds neat-ly from the angry wad
of his forehead(then fiends with pitchforkthings
will catch and toss me lovingly to
and fro.) Last,should you look,you
’ll find me prone upon a greatest flame,
which seethes in a beautiful way
upward;with someone by the name
of Paolo passing the time of day.
along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot,whispering like a drunken man
who(at a certain corner, suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.
awake
being not asleep,elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded:but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner
—“Ici?”—“Ah non,mon chéri;il fait trop froid”—
they are gone:along these gardens moves a wind bringing
rain and leaves,filling the air with fear
and sweetness....pauses. (Halfwhispering....halfsinging
stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)
when you were in Paris we met here
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
yes is a pleasant country:
if’s wintry
(my lovely)
let’s open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april’s where we’re)
it is so long since my heart has been with yours
shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town—
that i have perhaps forgotten
how,always(from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh)Love
coins His most gradual gesture,
and whittles life to eternity
—after which our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories
your homecoming will be my homecoming—
my selves go with you,only i remain;
a shadow phantom effigy or seeming
(an almost someone always who’s noone)
a noone who,till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your morning
feeling their stars have risen through your skies:
so,in how merciful love’s own name,linger
no more than selfless i can quite endure
the absence of that moment when a stranger
takes in his arms my very life who’s your
—when all fears hopes beliefs doubts disappear.
Everywhere and joy’s perfect wholeness we’re
one’s not half two. It’s two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more
minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth—beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)
one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they’re loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow
deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find
silently if,out of not knowable
night’s utmost nothing,wanders a little guess
(only which is this world)more my life does
not leap than with the mystery your smile
sings or if(spiralling as luminous
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss
losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow’s own joys and hoping’s very fears
yours is the light by which my spirit’s born:
yours is the darkness of my soul’s return
—you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars
hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
—fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young
pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life’s only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin
comes here a man would have from madame death
neverless now and without winter spring?
she’ll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing(if he should not sing)
how much more than enough for both of us
darling. And if i sing you are my voice,
being to timelessness as it’s to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land
(do lovers suffer?all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad?only their smallest joy’s
a universe emerging from a wish)
love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star
—do lovers love?why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools,all’s well