Voices to Voices, Lip to Lip

e. e. cummings

voices to voices, lip to lip
i swear (to noone everyone) constitutes
undying; or whatever this and that petal confutes . . .
to exist being a peculiar form of sleep
what's beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated: i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May
-bring forth your flowers and machinery: scuplture and prose
flowers guess and miss
machinery is the more accurate, yes
it delivers the goods, Heaven knows
(yet are we mindful, though not as yet awake,
of ourselves which shout and cling, being
for a little while and which easily break
in spite of the best overseeing)
i mean that the blond absence of any program
except last and always and first to live
makes unimportant what i and you believe;
not for philosophy does this rose give a damn. . .
bring on your fireworks, which are a mixed
splendor of piston and of pistil; very well
provided an instant may be fixed
so that it will not rub, like any other pastel.
(While you and i have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneeyed son for a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?
each dream nascitur, is not made . . . )
why then to Hell with that: the other; this,
since the thing perhaps is
to eat flower and not to be afraid.
what if a much of a which of a wind
what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
_when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man
what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of things
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
_whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring
what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't: blow death to was)
_all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live.