A sonnet by e e cummings (a poem I have loved nearly all my life) begins like this:
I thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
Similar feelings of thankfulness, even if not addressed to any sort of god, have come to many of us, as day has followed day of glorious spring weather. We have watched the leaf-buds opening, so now small flames of emerald glow along every branch. We see “the leaping greenly spirits of trees” all around, and they gladden us, despite everything that is happening now.
Cummings loved spring especially. After the second of his “six nonlectures” at Harvard in 1952-53, he read five celebrations of spring by other poets. In the body of the lecture he spoke of his first childhood encounter with “that mystery who is Nature….my enormous smallness entered Her illimitable being.” And, he said, “…the wonder of my first meeting with Herself is with me now.” In his poems he gives us that young wonder, still fresh.
Also still with him, he said, “is the coming (obedient to Her each resurrection) of a roguish and resistless More Than Someone: Whom my deepest selves unfailingly recognized, though His disguise protected him from all the world.” And then he went straight into his poem “In Just-/spring,” with its “little lame balloonman” who is “queer old” and “goat-footed.” Is this enigmatic balloonman, this Pan, the mysterious “More Than Someone”?
“I thank You God” seems more straightforward; he speaks directly to the deity. Not the God of the churches though. Biographer Christopher Sawyer-Luçanno says although cummings “always had a spiritual bent,” increasing as he grew older, his spirituality lived outside organized religion. Philosopher A J Ayer accused him of being “almost an animist,” one who believes God resides in all living things. He said, “Almost? I AM an animist.” And a sense that every living thing is a holy mystery illuminates his work.
Sometimes the mystery of everything just overwhelms. This spring, we have rejoiced in natural beauty while, simultaneously although that seems impossible, suffering anxiety and, in many cases, bereavement. These surreally conflicting feelings leave the head spinning.
This sonnet, however, is pure joy. It ends:
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)