Three poems (more than two!) poems by E. E. Cummings recorded on the shore of the Virgin River in northern Arizona, at the edge of the Mojave Desert. I was sitting on a big, jutting chunk of red sandstone, surrounded by Joshua trees and cacti.
These three poems are of varying levels of difficulty, but for today, the only one that gets the double treatment is "sweet spring is your."
One thing I didn't mention—because I am a man with great self-control—is that I can't read "viva sweet love" without thinking of Elvis singing "Viva Las Vegas." And maybe that's why I chose this poem, sitting just a long stone's throw from the road that would take me there. I can imagine Elvis singing a song with these lyrics, and it would have been a classic.
Instead, I discovered "sweet spring is your" from this album (Apple Music, Spotify) by the acoustic chamber quarter (formerly trio) Tin Hat.
TEXT OF POEMS
All the following are by E. E. Cummings and published in 1x1 [One times one] (1944), which is also included in his Complete Poems, 1904-1962
LI
"sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"
(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)
lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive
(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)
not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing
(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)
"sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love"
XXVII
old mr ly
fresh from a fu
ruddy as a sun
with blue true two
man
neral
rise
eyes
"this world's made 'bout
right it's the people that
abuses it you can git
anything you like out
of it if
you gut a mind
to there's something
for everybody it's a"
old mr lyman
ruddy as a sunrise
fresh with blue come
true from
a funeral
eyes
"big
thing"
DXIV
(NOTE: my typesetting of the poem that follows is slightly off from the original, entirely due to some limitations in Markdown and in Squarespace. If you're going to copy this for your school assignment, note that "A world made" should be indented to follow the period of the line preceding it. Better yet, find it printed in a dead tree paper book...)
pity this busy monster,manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
—electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange;lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born—pity poor flesh
and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if—listen:there's a hell
of a good universe next door;let's go
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