I. when my love comes to see me it's
just a little like music, a
little more like curving colour (say
orange)
    against silence, or darkness . . . .

the coming of my love emits
a wonderful smell in my mind,

you should see when i turn to find
her how my least heart-beat becomes less.
And then all her beauty is a vise

whose stilling lips murder suddenly me,

but of my corpse the tool her smile makes something
suddenly luminous and precise

--- and then we are I and She . . . .

what is that the hurdy-gurdy's playing

 

II. it is funny, you will be dead some day.
By you the mouth hair eyes, and i mean
the unique and nervously obscene

need; it's funny. They will all be dead

knead of lustfulhunched deeplytoplay
lips and stare the gross fuzzy-pash
--- dead --- and the dark gold delicately smash . . . .
grass, and the stars, of my shoulder in stead.

It is a funny, thing. And you will be

and i and all the days and nights that matter
knocked by sun moon jabbed jerked with ecstasy
. . . . tremble (not knowing how much better

than me will you like the rain's face and

the rich improbable hands of the Wind)

 

III.
i have loved, let us see if that's all.
Bit into you as teeth, in the stone
of a musical fruit.  My lips pleasantly groan
on your taste.  Jumped the quick wall

of your smile into stupid gardens
if this were not enough (not really enough
pulled one before one the vague tough

exquisite

     flowers, whom hardens
richly, darkness. On the whole
possibly have i loved . . . . ? you)
          sheath before sheath

stripped to the Odour.  (and here's what WhoEver will know
Had you as bite teeth;
i stood with you as a foal

stands but as the trees, lay, which grow

--- ©1923, e. e. cummings