Is 5/FOUR

by E. E. Cummings

FOUR

the moon looked into my window
it touched me with its small hands I
and with curling infantile
fingers it understood my eyes cheeks mouth
its hands(slipping)felt of my necktie wandered
against my shirt and into my body the
sharp things fingered tinily my heart life

the little hands withdrew, jerkily, themselves
quietly they began playing with a button
the moon smiled she
let go my vest and crept
through the window
she did not fall
she went creeping along the air
she went creeping along the air over houses
she went creeping along the air over houses  roofs

And out of the east toward
her a fragile light bent gatheringly

if being morticed with a dream
myself speaks

(whispering,
suggesting that our souls
inhabit whatever is between them)
knowing my lips hands the way i move
my habits laughter

i say
you will perhaps pardon,
possibly you will comprehend. and how
this has arrived your mind may guess

if at sunset
it should, leaning against me, smile;
or(between dawn and twilight) giving

your eyes, present me also
with the terror of shrines

which noone has suspected (but
wherein silently
always
are kneeling the various deaths
which are your lover lady: together with what keen
innumerable lives he has not lived.

here’s a little mouse)and
what does he think about, i
wonder as over this
floor (quietly with

bright eyes)drifts(nobody
can tell because
Nobody knows, or why
jerks Here &, here,
gr(oo)ving the room’s Silence)this like
a littlest
poem a
(with wee ears and see?

tail frisks)
can tell because (gonE)
“mouse”,
“mouse”, We are not the same you and

i, since here’s a little he
or is
it It
?⁠ (or was something we saw in the mirror)?

therefore we’ll kiss;for maybe
what was Disappeared
into ourselves

who⁠ (look).⁠ ,startled

but if i should say
goodmorning trouble adds
up all sorts of quickly
things on the slate of that
nigger’s
face(but

If i should say thankyouverymuch

mr rosenbloom picks strawberries
with beringed hands)but if

i Should say solong my
tailor
chuckles

like a woman in a dream(but if i
should say
Now the all saucers
but cups if begin to spoons dance every-

should where say over the damned table and we
hold lips Eyes everything
hands you know what
happens)but if i should,
Say,

in spite of everything
which breathes and moves, since Doom
(with white longest hands
neatening each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds

—before leaving my room
i turn, and (stooping
through the morning)kiss
this pillow, dear
where our heads lived and were.

you are not going to, dear. You are not going to and
i but that doesn’t in the least matter. The big
fear Who held us deeply in His fist is

no longer, can you imagine it
i can’t which doesn’t matter
and what does is possibly this dear, that we may resume
impact with the inutile collide

once more with the imaginable, love, and eat sunlight(do
you believe it? j begin to and that doesn’t matter) which

i suggest teach us a new terror always
which shall brighten
carefully these things we consider life.
Dear i put my eyes into you but that doesn’t matter
further than of old

because you fooled the doctors,itouch you with hopes and
words and with soand so: we are together, we will
kiss or smile or move. It’s different too isn’t it

different dear from moving as we, you
and i,usedtomovewhen i thoughtyou were going to(but
that doesn’t matter)
when you thought you were going to America.
when you thought you were going to America. Then

moving was a matter of not keeping still;we were
two alert lice in the blond hair of nothing

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 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 each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

some ask praise of their fellows
but i being otherwise
made compose curves
and yellows, angles or silences
to a less erring end)

myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate

a rhythm in your hair,
(your fingertips
the way you move)
the way you move)‍the

painter of your voice—
beyond these elements

remarkably nothing is. . . .therefore,lady
am i content should any
by me carven thing provoke
your gesture possibly or

any painting (for its own

reason)in your lips
slenderly should create one least smile
(shyly
if a poem should lift to
me the distinct country of your
eyes, gifted with green twilight)

supposing i dreamed this)
only imagine, when day has thrilled
you are a house around which
i am a wind—

your walls will not reckon how
strangely my life is curved
since the best he can do
is to peer through windows, unobserved

—listen, for(out of all
things)dream is noone’s fool;
if this wind who i am prowls
carefully around this house of you

love being such, or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark

if light should flower:
or laughing sparkle from
the shut house(around and around
which a poor wind will roam

you are like the snow only
purer fleeter, like the rain
only sweeter frailer you

whom certain
flowers ressemble but trembling(cowards
which fear
to miss within your least gesture the hurting
skill which lives)and since

nothing lingers
beyond a little instant,
along with rhyme and with laughter
O my lady
(and every brittle marvelous breathing thing)

since i and you are on our ways to dust

of your fragility
(but chiefly of your smile,
most suddenly which is
of love and death a marriage) you give me

courage
so that against myself
the sharp days slobber in vain:

Nor am i afraid that
this, which we call autumn, cleverly
dies and over the ripe world wanders with
a near and careful
smile in his mouth (making

everything suddenly old and with his awkward eyes
pushing
sleep under and thoroughly
into all beautiful things)

winter, whom Spring shall kill

because
you go away i give roses who
will advise even yourself, lady
in the most certainly (of what we
everywhere do not touch)deep
things;
things; remembering ever so
tinily these, your crisp
eyes actually shall contain new faeries

(and if your slim lips are amused, no wisest

painter of fragile
Marys will understand
how smiling may be made as
skilfully.) But carry
also, with that indolent and with
this flower wholly whom you do
not ever fear,
not ever fear, me in your heart

softly;not all
but the beginning

of mySelf

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,

amiseparated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? ohimean:
entirely having in my careful how
careful arms created this at length
inexcusable, this inexplicable pleasure—you go from several
persons: believe me that strangers arrive
when i have kissed you into a memory
slowly, oh seriously
—that since and if you disappear

solemnly
myselves
ask “life, the question how do i drink dream smile

and how do i prefer this face to another and
why do i weep eat sleep—what does the whole intend”
they wonder. ohandtheycry “tobe,being,thatiamalive
this absurd fraction in its lowest terms
with everything cancelled
but shadows
—what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like, for the reason that i
hate people and lean out of this window is love,love
and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason

that i do not fall into this street is love.”

Nobody wears a yellow
flower in his buttonhole
he is altogether a queer fellow
as young as he is old

when autumn comes,
who twiddles his white thumbs
and frisks down the boulevards

without his coat and hat

—(and i wonder just why that
should please him or i wonder what he does)

and why(at the bottom of this trunk,
under some dirty collars) only a
moment
(or
was it perhaps a year)ago i found staring

me in the face a dead yellow small rose

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town—

that i have perhaps forgotten
how, always (from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh) Love
coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

—after which our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories

i am a beggar always
who begs in your mind

(slightly smiling, patient, unspeaking
with a sign on his
breast
BLIND)yes i

am this person of whom somehow
you are never wholly rid(and who

does not ask for more than
just enough dreams to
live on)
live on) after all, kid

you might as well
toss him a few thoughts

a little love preferably,
anything which you can’t
pass off on other people: for
instance a
plugged promise—

then he will maybe(hearing something
fall into his hat) go wandering
after it with fingers;till having

found
what was thrown away
what was thrown away‍himself
taptaptaps out of your brain, hopes, life

to(carefully turning a
corner)never bother you any more.

if within tonight’s erect
everywhere of black muscles fools
a weightless slowness(deftly

muting the world’s texture with drifted

gifts of featheriest slenderness and
how gradually which descending are suddenly
received )or by doomfull connivance

accurately thither and hither myself

struts unremembered (rememberingly
with in both pockets curled hands moves)
why then toward morning he is a ghost whom

assault these whispering fists of hail

(and a few windows awaken certain faces
busily horribly blunder through new light
hush we are made of the same thing as perhaps

nothing, he murmurs carefully lying down)

how this uncouth enchanted
person, arising from a
restaurant, looks breathes or moves
—climbing (past light after
light)to turn, disappears

the very swift and
invisibly living
rhythm of your Heart possibly

will understand;
or why (in

this most exquisite of cities all
of the long night a fragile imitation of
(perhaps)myself carefully wanders
streets dark and, deep

with rain. . . .

(he, slightly whom or
cautiously this person

and this imitation resemble,
descends into the earth with the year
a cigarette between his ghost-lips

gradually)
remembering badly, softly
your
kissed thrice suddenly smile

i go to this window

just as day dissolves
when it is twilight(and
looking up in fear

i see the new moon
thinner than a hair)

making me feel
how myself has been coarse and dull
compared with you, silently who are
and cling
to my mind always

But now she sharpens and becomes crisper
until i smile with knowing
—and all about
herself

the sprouting largest final air

plunges
plunges inward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams