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e. e. cummings, “it is so long since my heart has been with yours”

it is so long since my heart has been with yours


shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town—

that i have perhaps forgotten
how,always(from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh)Love
coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

—after which our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories
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Jenny said…
There is some sense of lost love to museums. Different kinds and degrees of nostalgia. Thank you,
Monday, September 12, 2011 12:34:00 am
Dr J said…
I so agree. My favourite writer on this is Didier Maleuvre, even though his book is really literary criticism, but he makes some great points about the importance of the fear of loss to memory (as does Pierre Nora, in a more judgemental way).
Monday, September 12, 2011 1:02:00 am
Dr J said…
And don't you think this poem is like the perfect poetic description of The Museum of Broken Relationships?
Monday, September 12, 2011 1:02:00 am
Jenny said…
I do think it is! That's exactly what I thought of on first reading it.

What fascinates me, and I have been talking and thinking about this for a while, is the different gradations and forms of an emotion, or feeling, akin, but not entirely identical to nostalgia which are to be found across cultures and history. I think that there are such fine grain distinctions. The feelings surrounding loss are deeply divergent, different between individuals as much if not more so than cultures. Fascinating.

And more museum poems are always welcome on here, for me at least!
Monday, September 12, 2011 1:14:00 am
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