since feeling is first

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

Poetry Tale: The Wrong Answer

FREE AND OPEN: Hello Doggo’s music, recordings and artwork: CC0 1.0, credit optional. The source poem has its own rights status: Poem is public domain in the United States and at least 91 other countries; still in copyright in Italy, Peru and Uruguay through 2032.

TEXT PROVENANCE · Published in is 5 (1926). The linked Wikisource edition is the 1970 Liveright paperback, FOUR VII, not a scan of the 1926 first edition. Existing poem wording is retained.

is 5, FOUR VII — 1970 Liveright paperback, via Wikisource (original collection 1926)

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