Cummings

(on this, the 116th anniversary of his birth)


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 the 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)


[from 95 poems]

To celebrate

To celebrate the eighth anniversary of my having begun this blog, I have made a curious choice: the clip of Dylan Thomas reading his Rabelaisian poem "Lament."  (I thought about posting "Especially When the October Wind," also by Thomas.  And perhaps I shall, later today!)

But here is "Lament."  His voice is exquisitely comic, particularly in the later stanzas:

Tweaking the template

... in anticipation of the eighth anniversary (October 8) of this seasoned blog!  I don't think I've made the final "tweak" just yet ...

it's probably ungrammatical, but what the heck .....

la politique
ne vaut rien
comparée à
un cœur humain

where are the estlins of yesteryear?

(from i: six nonlectures by E E Cummings [pp.31-32])

in the world of my boyhood -- long, long ago

before time was space and Oedipus was a complex and religion was the opiate of the people and pigeons had learned to play pingpong -- social stratification not merely existed but luxuriated. All women were not, as now [1952], ladies; a gentleman was a gentleman; and a mucker (as the professional denizens of Irving and Scott streets knew full well : since their lofty fragment of Cambridge almost adjoined plebeian Somerville) was a mucker. Being myself a professor's (& later a clergyman's) son, I had every socalled reason to accept these conventional distinctions without cavil; yet for some unreason I didn't. The more implacably a virtuous Cambridge drew me toward what might have been her bosom, the more sure I felt that soi-disant respectability comprised nearly everything which I couldn't respect, and the more eagerly I explored sinful Somerville. But while sinful Somerville certainly possessed a bosom (in fact, bosoms) she also possessed fists which hit below the belt and arms which threw snowballs containing small rocks.

Little by little and bruise by teacup

my doubly disillusioned spirit made an awe-inspiring discovery; which (on more than several occasions) has prevented me from wholly misunderstanding socalled humanity : the discovery, namely, that all groups, gangs, and collectivities -- no matter how apparently disparate -- are fundamentally alike; and that what makes any world go round is not the trivial difference between a Somerville and a Cambridge, but the immeasurable difference between either of them and individuality. Whether this discovery is valid for you, I can't pretend to say : but I can and do say, without pretending, that it's true for me -- inasmuch as I've found (and am still finding) authentic individuals in the most varied environments conceivable. Nor will anything ever persuade me that, by turning Somerville into Cambridge or Cambridge into Somerville or both into neither, anybody can make an even slightly better world. Better worlds (I suggest) are born, not made; and their birthdays are the birthdays of individuals.