Is 5/FIVE

by E. E. Cummings

FIVE

after all white horses are in bed

will you walking beside me, my very lady,
if scarcely the somewhat city
wiggles in considerable twilight

touch (now) with a suddenly unsaid

gesture lightly my eyes?
And send life out of me and the night
absolutely into me. . . .a wise
and puerile moving of your arm will
do suddenly that

do suddenly that   will do
more than heroes beautifully in shrill
armour colliding on huge blue horses,
and the poets looked at them, and made verses,

through the sharp light cryingly as the knights flew.

touching you i say (it being Spring
and night) “let us go a very little beyond
the last road—there’s something to be found”

and smiling you answer “everything
turns into something else, and slips away. . . .
(these leaves are Thingish with moondrool
and i’m ever so very little afraid”)

and i’m ever so very little afraid”)  i say
“along this particular road the moon if you’ll
notice follows us like a big yellow dog. You

don’t believe? look back. (Along the sand
behind us, a big yellow dog that’s. . . .now it’s red
a big red dog that may be owned by who
knows)
knows)  only turn a little your. so. And

there’s the moon,there is something faithful and mad”

along the brittle treacherous bright streets
of memory comes my heart,singing like
an idiot, whispering like a drunken man

who(at a certain corner, suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.
the tall policeman of my mind.  awake
being not asleep, elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded: but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner

—“Ici?”—“Ah non, mon cheri; il fait trop froid”—
they are gone: along these gardens moves a wind bringing
rain and leaves, filling the air with fear
and sweetness. . . .pauses. (Halfwhispering. . . .halfsinging

stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)

when you were in Paris we met here

our touching hearts slenderly comprehend
(clinging as fingers, loving one another
gradually into hands) and bend
into the huge disaster of the year:

like this most early single star which tugs

weakly at twilight, caught in thickening fear
our slightly fingering spirits starve and smother;
until autumn abruptly wholly hugs

our dying silent minds, which hand in hand
at some window try to understand
the
the‍(through pale miles of perishing air, haunted
with huddling infinite wishless melancholy,
suddenly looming) accurate undaunted

moon’s bright third tumbling slowly

if i have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body’s whitest song
upon my mind—if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy—if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair

—let the world say “his most wise music stole
nothing from death?”—
nothing from death?”—‍ you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came

into the ragged meadow of my soul.