Day 477: A Wind Has Blown...

 

I notice I haven't posted any EE Cummings poems here in a while, one of my favourite poets. And I suppose it's because I always read him in spring/summer. He is the poet most taken and associated with Spring, naming it as one of his main muses (he even gives it a capital letter, which I love!) So many leaping and bounding poems he has written about it that embody its zest perfectly. Even his writing style is exuberant like spring, full of the joys and enthusiasms of its new beginnings.

He doesn't deal with autumn/winter quite as well you see. Here's one poem that marks a meditation on the season and notice how solemn and sober it is, not at all like his spring ramblings. And how much slower the tone is - he even makes use of full stops, something he very rarely does so intent are his rush-on run-on lines with fulfilling their ecstatic purpose! It is a weary speaker though who says dejectedly here: 'I think i have known Autumn too long.'

There's a sadness pervading this poem which slows everything down - exactly how a spring person and poet feels like now, exactly what autumn and winter does.

A Wind Has Blown The Rain Away And Blown - ee cummings

a wind has blown the rain away and blown
the sky away and all the leaves away,
and the trees stand.  I think i too have known
autumn too long

                  (and what have you to say,
wind wind wind—did you love somebody
and have you the petal of somewhere in your heart
pinched from dumb summer?
                            O crazy daddy
of death dance cruelly for us and start

the last leaf whirling in the final brain
of air!)Let us as we have seen see
doom’s integration………a wind has blown the rain

away and the leaves and the sky and the
trees stand:
             the trees stand.  The trees,
suddenly wait against the moon’s face.