“if only i’d thought of the right words / i wouldn’t be breaking apart all my pictures of you”

For Poetry Monday, back to cummings with a late sonnet (he died the next year):

your homecoming will be my homecoming, e. e. cummings

your homecoming will be my homecoming—

my selves go with you, only i remain;
a shadow phantom effigy or seeming
(an almost someone always who’s noone)

a noone who, till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your mourning

feeling their stars have risen through your skies:

so, in how merciful love’s own name, linger
no more than selfless i can quite endure
the absence of that moment when a stranger
takes in his arms my very lifes who’s you

—when all fears hopes beliefs doubts disappear.
Everywhere and joy’s perfect wholeness we’re


First published in the February 1961 issue of Poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from Pictures of You, The Cure.

Short very shameful confession

I just tapped the page of a paper book to turn it

😭😭😭