I carry your heart

Since our children have left home, I am often sad. This poem comforts me a bit, though it also makes me cry.

It would probably make E E Cummings cry, too, since he called himself e e cummings and didn't really go for capital letters or punctuation. But I put it as our "Poem of the Week" on the noticeboard at work (and heavens, it's hard enough to persuade our students to use punctuation without poets giving them dangerous ideas) so I "improved" it (sorry, e e). This is that version.


I CARRY YOUR HEART by E. E. Cummings


I carry your heart with me. (I carry it in
My heart.) I am never without it. (Anywhere
I go, you go, my dear; and whatever is done
By only me is your doing, my darling.)

I fear
No fate (for you are my fate, my sweet). I want
No world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
And it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
And whatever a sun will always sing is you.

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
And the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
Higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
And this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.

I carry your heart. (I carry it in my heart.)