e. e. cummings
Treat a man like dirt-he produces flowers.Collection: Flower
The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works. Jacques Barzun, 1959 all ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again.Collection: Ignorance
For surely as each November has its April, mysteries only are significant; and one mystery-of-mysteries creates them all: nothing false and possible is love (who's imagined,therefore limitless) love's to giving as to keeping's give; as yes is to if,love is to yesCollection: Love Is
guilt is the cause of more marauders than history's most obscene disaudersCollection: Guilt
a connotation of infinity sharpens the temporal splendor of this night when souls which have forgot frivolity in lowliness,noting the fatal flight of worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dream down eager avenues of lifelessness consider for how much themselves shall gleam, in the poised radiance of perpetualness. When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought is like a woman amorous to be known; and man,whose here is alway worse than naught, feels the tremendous yonder for his own— on such a night the sea through her blind miles of crumbling silence seriously smilesCollection: Dream
Let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid down with ought with because with every brain which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel.Collection: Thinking
one pierced moment whiter than the rest -turning from the tremendous lie of sleep i watch the roses of the day grow deep.Collection: Lying
Whatever's merely willful, and not miraculous (be never it so skilful) must wither fail and cease - but better than to grow beauty knows no.Collection: Simplicity
maybe god is a child ‘s hand)very carefully bring -ing to you and to me(and quite with out crushing)the papery weightless diminutive world with a hole in it out of which demons with wings would be streaming if something had(maybe they couldn’t agree)not happened(and floating- ly int oCollection: Crush
worms are the words but joy's the voiceCollection: Voice
O gouvernment francais, I think it was not very clever of You to put this terrible doll in La Ferte; for when Governments are found dead there is always a little doll on top of them, pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back at the microscopic knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their hearts.Collection: Clever
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 -excerpt of #35 from "100 Selected PoemsCollection: Country
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both deadCollection: Education
since the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraidCollection: Fear
God's terrible face brighter than a spoon collects the image of one fatal word;so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon)resembles something that has not occurred:i am a birdcage without any bird a collar looking for a dog a kisswithout lips;a prayer lacking any kneesbut something beats within my shirt to provehe is undead who living noone is.I have never loved you dear as now i love.Collection: Love
No evil is so worse than worst you fall in hate with love.Collection: Hate
since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry --the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for eachother: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesisCollection: Spring
And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my armsCollection: Bird
mr youse needn't be so spry concernin questions arty each has his tastes but as for i i likes a certain party gimme the he-man's solid bliss for youse ideas i'll match youse a pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statuesCollection: Girl
may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone.Collection: Travel
things which in my mind blossom will stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise appear capable of fragility and indecisionCollection: Mind
Next to of course god America i / love you land of the pilgrims and so forth ohCollection: Love You
in a middle of a room stands a suicide sniffing a Paper rose smiling to a self "somewhere it is Spring and sometimes people are in real:imagine somewhere real flowers,but I can't imagine real flowers for if I could,they would somehow not Be real" (so he smiles smiling)"but I will not everywhere be real to you in a moment" The is blond with small hands "& everything is easier than I had guessed everything would be;even remembering the way who looked at whom first,anyhow dancingCollection: Suicide
O sweet spontaneous earth how often has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty thou answereth them only with spring.Collection: Sweet
Must's a schoolroom in the month of mayCollection: May
The courage to receive time's mightiest dream.Collection: Dream
the other guineahen died of a broken heart and we came to New York. I used to sit at a table,drawing wings with a pencil that kept breaking and i kept remembering how your mind looked when it slept for several years,to wake up asking why. So then you turned into a photograph of somebody who’s trying not to laugh at somebody who’s trying not to cryCollection: New York
i shall imagine life is not worth dying,if (and when)roses complain their beauties are in vain but though mankind persuades itself that every weed's a rose,roses(you feel certain)will only smileCollection: Weed
Time cannot children,poets,lovers tell- measure imagine,mystery,a kiss -not though mankind would rather know than feelCollection: Children
There are certain things in which one is unable to believe for the simple reason that he never ceases to feel them. Things of this sort - things which are always inside of us and in fact are us and which consequently will not be pushed off or away where we can begin thinking about them - are no longer things; they, and the us which they are, equals A Verb; an IS.Collection: Life
Spring is like a perhaps handCollection: Hope
Who knows if the moon's / a balloon, coming out of a keen city / in the sky - filled with pretty people?Collection: Moon
Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister DeathCollection: Jesus
my mind is a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal tools in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex -ecute strides of cobalt nevertheless i feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming something a little different, in fact myself hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowingsCollection: Taste And Smell
Your homecoming will be my homecomingCollection: Homecoming
i have found what you are like the rain (Who feathers frightened fields with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields easily the pale club of the wind and swirled justly souls of flower strike the air in utterable coolness deeds of gren thrilling light with thinned newfragile yellows lurch and.press --in the woods which stutter and sing And the coolness of your smile is stirringofbirds between my arms;but i should rather than anything have(almost when hugeness will shut quietly)almost, your kissCollection: Rain
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 youngCollection: Hate
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragilityCollection: Small Hands
for whenever men are right they are not youngCollection: Men
maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach (to play one day) and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles and may come home with a smooth rounded stone as small as a world and as big as alone. for whatever we loose (like a you or a me) it is always ourselves we find in the sea.Collection: Beach
Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy. Easy? Of course - you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands. I never met him. Who? Everybody. Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting? I am. Pardon me? I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational. Not all painting. No: housepainting is representational. And what does a housepainter represent? Ten dollars an hour. In other words, you don't want to be serious - It takes two to be serious.Collection: Life
...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)Collection: Rain
All which isn't singing is mere talking... and all talking's to oneself alone but the very song of (as mountains feel and lovers) singing is silence.Collection: Song
The Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.Collection: Soul
since feelings come first, who cares about the syntax of things?Collection: Feelings
All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again.Collection: Ignorance