Poem (Untitled)

by e.e. cummings

all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter’s not forever, even snow
melts; and if spring should spoil the game, what then?

all history’s a winter sport or three:
but were it five, i’d still insist that all
history is too small for even me;
for me and you, exceedingly too small.

Swoop (shrill collective myth) into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
–tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they’ll scarcely find us (if they do,
we’ll move away still further: into now

read at St. Lydia’s on September 12