the archivist April 28, 2006

you shall above all things be glad and young
e.e. cummings

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you’re young, whatever life you wear
it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love
whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on; and his mind take off time
that you should ever think, may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies, the foetal grave
called progress, and negation’s dead undoom.
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

 

E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems 1904-1962. amzn | library