Look, everywhere Spring is springing into being: blue skies, green shoots, a renewing, a remaking. EE Cummings rightly personifies Spring here 'a mender of things' with 'eager fingers' and 'patient eyes.'
Spring was Cumming's ultimate Muse. He wrote so many poems about it, each of them an enthusiastic celebration of the season and greening and bursting with energy. (I will post some intermittently throughout the next few weeks.)
*(I know the seasons are all spelt with lower case, but I've always liked to give Spring a capital 'S' as it's my favourite season and all - seems like Cummings had the same idea!)
*(I know the seasons are all spelt with lower case, but I've always liked to give Spring a capital 'S' as it's my favourite season and all - seems like Cummings had the same idea!)
in Spring comes - ee cummings
in
Spring comes(no-
one
asks his name)
a mender
of things
with eager
fingers(with
patient
eyes)re
-new-
ing remaking what
other
-wise we should
have
thrown a-
way(and whose
brook
-bright flower-
soft bird
-quick voice loves
children
and sunlight and
mountains)in april(but
if he should
Smile)comes
nobody'll know
what does the last line mean? Nobody will know…?
ReplyDeleteWell I don't know for certain - I'm not the poet! What does it mean to you? See this is the beauty of poetry - it's ability to be flexible in meaning, accomodating to everyone. I think it refers to how spring makes a change in everyone but they don't really know it, not at first anyway. Or that spring (the 'he' in the poem) smiles at his own work:
ReplyDelete'(but if should Smile)....
nobody'll know'
but we don't see that. Spring being the season, the earth, God's handiwork - what you will. This force enjoys its effect on us, as much as we enjoy it.