since feeling is first

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

— e.e. cummings

One Comment on “since feeling is first”

  1. David

    The analysis of this poem by E.E. Cummings is overthought in almost every case. But,since I will need to offer my own thoughts on my analysis I will need you, the reader to focus on the last statement that has so many people perplexed. E.E. Cummings summed up everything in those last parting words.

    As he is dying and his lover is in his arms he basically tells her that ” Life is not a paragraph” and “Death i think is no parenthesis”. One only has to look at an obituary to understand E.E. Cummings incredible statement. Everyone’s life’s are so much more important than a short paragraph of your life story and the (day you are born and died) is certainly not the parenthesis of what you were or how you lived and everyone you shared your life with. With so many deaths occurring with the Covid -19 virus I only hope that those individuals have someone to tell their story longer than a paragraph and not end it so quickly as in a parenthesis. D.D.Cannon

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