America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn't standing still.
if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have one. It will not be a pansy heaven or a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but it will be a heaven of blackred roses my father will be(deep like a rose tall like a rose) standing near my swaying over her (silent) with eyes which are really petals and see nothing with the face of a poet really which is a flower and not a face with hands which whisper This is my beloved my (suddenly in sunlight he will bow, and the whole garden will bow)
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.
may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living whatever they sing is better than to know and if men should not hear them men are old
may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if it
Books by and about e. e. (Edward Estlin) cummings
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