xix.
my girl’s tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge—my girl’s tall
and taut,with thin legs just like a vine
that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.
vii.
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new
ix.
When thou art dead,dead,and far from the splendid sin,
And the fleshless soul whines at the steep of the last abyss
To leave forever its heart acold in an earthy bed,
When,forth of the body which loved my body,the soul-within
Comes,naked from the pitiless metamorphosis,
What shall it say to mine,when we are dead,dead?
(When I am dead,dead, and they have laid thee in,
The body my lips so loved given to worms to kiss,
And the cool smooth throat,and bright hair of the head—).
xvii.
Lady,i will touch you with my mind.
Touch you and touch and touch
until you give
me suddenly a smile,shyly obscene
(lady i will
touch you with my mind.)Touch
you,that is all,
lightly and you utterly will become
with infinite ease
the poem which i do not write.
xx.
you asked me to come:it was raining a little,
and the spring;a clumsy brightness of air
wonderfully stumbled above the square,
little amorous-tadpole people wiggled
battered by stuttering pearl,
leaves jiggled
to the jigging fragrance of newness
—and then. My crazy fingers liked your dress
....your kiss,your kiss was a distinct brittle
flower,and the flesh crisp set
my love-tooth on edge. So until light
each having each we promised to forget—
wherefore is there nothing left to guess:
the cheap intelligent thighs,the electric trite
thighs;the hair stupidly priceless.
9.
there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic
Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly
we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.
(So,when kiss Spring comes
we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don’t make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)
xxvii.
her
flesh
Came
at
meassandca V
ingint
oA
chute
i had cement for her,
merrily
we became each
other humped to tumbling
garble when
a
minute
pulled the sluice
emerging.
concrete
iv.
What is thy mouth to me?
A cup of sorrowful incense,
A tree of keen leaves,
An eager high ship,
A quiver of superb arrows.
What is thy breast to me?
A flower of new prayer,
A poem of firm light,
A well of cool birds,
A drawn bow trembling.
What is thy body to me?
A theatre of perfect silence,
A chariot of red speed;
And O, the dim feet
Of white-maned desires!
Erotic Poems
By E.E. Cummings
80 pages. W. W. Norton & Company. $12.95.
Reprinted from Erotic Poems by E.E. Cummings. Copyright (c) 1991 by The Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust and George James Firmage. Drawings copyright (c) 2010 by The Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation.
