since feeling is first (1926)

e.e. cummings

 


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