___________
ENDINGS
TOWARD THE END of life, E. E. Cummings was considerably sobered by the aches and stresses of aging. He suffered severely from arthritis and was forced to wear a metal-braced corset that he called “The Iron Maiden.” Other ills and physical deteriorations caused him additional discomfort and, on two occasions, surgery. The decline in his physical condition probably accounts for the increasing harshness in his satires and his readiness, like Mark Twain in his last years, to denounce the human race. But it also brought him to recognize, from time to time, that he shared with other human beings the inclination to selfish behavior and unjustified criticism of others. Thus, poems begin to crop up that acknowledge his own faults. They usually express a divided view of human nature, that human beings are half angel and half demon—as he expressed it in the poems “so many selves(so many fiends and gods” and “no man,if men are gods.”
This is a long-standing Christian concept, and indeed Cummings turned toward religion in his later years. “As I grow older, I tend toward piety,” he acknowledged one Christmas season in 1948. His journals contain occasional wrestlings with religious belief and a great many prayers to “le bon Dieu.” Poems like “i thank You God for most this amazing” and “i am a little church” are much in keeping with this turn of mind. But his reading also extended into Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and Taoism, which appealed to a mystical tendency in Cummings that was quite congruent with his long-time interest in Emerson and New England Transcendentalism. Thus, his religious outlook continued to return to the Unitarianism of his father, an undogmatic position, which nevertheless held a concept of God as omnipresent in the natural world who, although incomprehensible to the understanding of ordinary mortals, was most closely approached by being in tune with nature.
Cummings’ poems about the end of life show his acceptance of being a part of the natural process, which becomes, at length, dissolution into the “mystery to be.” There are some expressions of regret about the loss of powers in old age—to have to make do with “contentment” rather than “ecstasy” and to substitute “caution” for “curiosity,” as he says in the poem “for prodigal read generous.” But the optimism that colored his early life surrounds his contemplations of death and afterlife, as we can observe when he says (in “all nearness pauses,while a star can grow”) “if a world ends/more than all worlds begin to(see?)begin,” or when he envisions himself finally lying down “to dream of Spring.”
a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me—
who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was
—but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other’s each
so many selves(so many fiends and gods
each greedier than every)is a man
(so easily one in another hides;
yet man can,being all,escape from none)
so huge a tumult is the simplest wish:
so pitiless a massacre the hope
most innocent(so deep’s the mind of flesh
and so awake what waking calls asleep)
so never is most lonely man alone
(his briefest breathing lives some planet’s year,
his longest life’s a heartbeat of some sun;
his least unmotion roams the youngest star)
—how should a fool that calls him “I” presume
to comprehend not numerable whom?
no man,if men are gods;but if gods must
be men,the sometimes only man is this
(most common,for each anguish is his grief;
and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare)
a fiend,if fiends speak truth;if angels burn
by their own generous completely light,
an angel;or(as various worlds he’ll spurn
rather than fail immeasurable fate)
coward,clown,traitor,idiot,dreamer,beast—
such was a poet and shall be and is
—who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend
a sunbeam’s architecture with his life:
and carve immortal jungles of despair
to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand
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 unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
—i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains
i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
—i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
it is winter a moon in the afternoon
and warm air turning into January darkness up
through which sprouting gently,the cathedral
leans its dreamy spine against thick sunset
i perceive in front of our lady a ring of people
a brittle swoon of centrifugally expecting
faces clumsily which devours a man,three cats,
five white mice,and a baboon.
O a monkey with a sharp face waddling carefully
the length of this padded pole;a monkey attached
by a chain securely to this always talking
individual,mysterious witty hatless.
Cats which move smoothly from neck to neck of bottles,cats
smoothly willowing out and in between bottles,who step smoothly
and rapidly along this pole over five squirming
mice;or leap through hoops of fire,creating smoothness.
People stare,the drunker applaud
while twilight takes the sting out of the vermilion
jacket of nodding hairy Jacqueline who is given a mouse
to hold lovingly,
our lady what do you think of this? Do your proud fingers and
your arms tremble remembering something squirming fragile
and which had been presented unto you by a mystery?
...the cathedral recedes into weather without answering
from spiralling ecstatically this
proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night
blossoms a newborn babe:around him,eyes
—gifted with every keener appetite
than mere unmiracle can quite appease—
humbly in their imagined bodies kneel
(over time space doom dream while floats the whole
perhapsless mystery of paradise)
mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been,and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child;nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother’s smile
—whose only secret all creation sings
brIght
bRight s??? big
(soft)
soft near calm
(Bright)
calm st?? holy
(soft briGht deep)
yeS near sta? calm star big yEs
alone
(wHo
Yes
near deep whO big alone soft near
deep calm deep
????Ht ?????T)
Who(holy alone)holy(alone holy)alone
old age sticks
up Keep
Off
signs)&
youth yanks them
down(old
age
cries No
Tres)&(pas)
youth laughs
(sing
old age
scolds Forbid
den Stop
Must
n’t Don’t
&)youth goes
right on
gr
owing old
for prodigal read generous
—for youth read age—
read for sheer wonder mere surprise
(then turn the page)
contentment read for ecstasy
—for poem prose—
caution for curiosity
(and close your eyes)
enter no(silence is the blood whose flesh
is singing)silence:but unsinging. In
spectral such hugest how hush,one
dead leaf stirring makes a crash
—far away(as far as alive)lies
april;and i breathe-move-and-seem some
perpetually roaming whylessness—
autumn has gone:will winter never come?
O come,terrible anonymity;enfold
phantom me with the murdering minus of cold
—open this ghost with millionary knives of wind—
scatter his nothing all over what angry skies and
gently
(very whiteness:absolute peace,
never imaginable mystery)
descend
now does our world descend
the path to nothingness
(cruel now cancels kind;
friends turn to enemies)
therefore lament,my dream
and don a doer’s doom
create is now contrive;
imagined, merely know
(freedom:what makes a slave)
therefore,my life,lie down
and more by most endure
all that you never were
hide,poor dishonoured mind
who thought yourself so wise;
and much could understand
concerning no and yes:
if they’ve become the same
it’s time you unbecame
where climbing was and bright
is darkness and to fall
(now wrong’s the only right
since brave are cowards all)
therefore despair,my heart
and die into the dirt
but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss—
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything’s nothing
—arise,my soul;and sing
all nearness pauses,while a star can grow
all distance breathes a final dream of bells;
perfectly outlined against afterglow
are all amazing the and peaceful hills
(not where not here but neither’s blue most both)
and history immeasurably is
wealthier by a single sweet day’s death:
as not imagined secrecies comprise
goldenly huge whole the upfloating moon.
Time’s a strange fellow;
more he gives than takes
(and he takes all)nor any marvel finds
quite disappearance but some keener makes
losing,gaining
—love! if a world ends
more than all worlds begin to(see?)begin
what is
a
voyage
?
up
upup:go
ing
com;ing won
der
ful sun
moon stars the all,& a
(big
ger than
big
gest could even
begin to be)dream
of;a thing:of
a creature who’s
O
cean
(everywhere
nothing
but light and dark;but
never forever
& when)un
til one strict
here of amazing most
now,with what
thousands of (hundreds
of)millions of
CriesWhichAreWings
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.)
in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)
in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me
Now i lay(with everywhere around)
me(the great dim deep sound
of rain;and of always and of nowhere)and
what a gently welcoming darkestness—
now i lay me down(in a most steep
more than music)feeling that sunlight is
(life and day are)only loaned:whereas
night is given(night and death and the rain
are given;and given is how beautifully snow)
now i lay me down to dream of(nothing
i or any somebody or you
can begin to begin to imagine)
something which nobody may keep,
now i lay me down to dream of Spring
one
t
hi
s
snowflake
(a
li
ght
in
g)
is upon a gra
v
es
t
one