on the learn: I'm Only Breathing.

8.05.2009

I'm Only Breathing.

I can't believe I've never posted this before--have I? I love e.e. so much. Sometimes his words remind me a little bit of Walt Whitman.

i am a little church(no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
--i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
--i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

4 comments:

Tasha said...: I like e.e. cummings, too. Only the poems of his that I have in my head are a bit dirtier!; August 5, 2009 at 7:00 PM
Ms. X said...: this definitely reminds me of W.W...i think it's the momentum. lots of progressive tense reminds me of "out of the cradle".; August 5, 2009 at 9:22 PM
teach people not books said...: charley-- yeah, i like those too ;]
you should have heard my kids when we were reading whitman--"ms. [me], why aren't we reading the other parts? are they too sexual?" "uhmm... why don't you google him and find out for yourself?"

x--i am refraining from referencing our discussion of your exploration of whitman in the context of your college career. aaaahahaha.; August 6, 2009 at 12:07 AM
Amanda Villagómez said...: Wow, that is a great poem. I know that I have read e.e. cummings before in classes, but I would love to read more of his poetry now on my own.

I also wanted to let you know that I am doing a Mia King giveaway on one of my blogs. When I originally posted about one of her books you left a comment, so I thought you might be interested http://enbuscadeequilibrio.blogspot.com/2009/07/mia-king-q-and-giveaway.html; August 6, 2009 at 1:19 AM

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sagacity

"Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Choice is illusory to the degree it represents the expectations of others. While all transition involves change, not all change results in transition."
Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness

"'Curiosity never killed this cat.' That's what I'd like as my epitaph."
Studs Terkel

"Whenever I am asked to do a good thing, I say yes right away."
Maya Angelou

"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
James Madison

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
e.e. cummings

"As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole lives. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before."
Henry David Thoreau, "Winter"

"As long as we continue to mindlessly defer to institutions that have themselves begun to cynically drop any pretence of being moral, just, or respectable - why should the government listen? it's doing just fine."
Arundhati Roy

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality."
Dante Alighieri

" But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife. / You are still the bread and the knife. / You will always be the bread and the knife, / not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow-- the wine."
Billy Collins

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
Albert Einstein

"The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. . . Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measure of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform."
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"

"'Well, how can you talk without a brain?'
'I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?'"
Dorothy & Scarecrow,
The Wizard of Oz

"Poetry (and now my voice is rising) / is not all love, love, love, / and I'm sorry the dog died. / Poetry (here I hear myself the loudest) / is the human voice, / and are we not of interest to each other?"
Elizabeth Alexander

"But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure. "
Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

"Seed hope. Flower peace."
Daniel Berrigan

on the learn

8.05.2009

I'm Only Breathing.

4 comments:

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