Love’s Function

Here’s a poem by E.E. Cum­mings I would have loved to include in the com­ing ter­m’s course read­er but could­n’t … but which I con­sider one of my favourites!

Love’s func­tion is to fab­ric­ate unknownness

(known being wish­less but love all of wishing)
though life’s lived wrong­sideout, same­ness chokes oneness
truth is con­fused with fact, fish boast of fishing

and men are caught by worms (love may not care
if time tot­ters,  light droops, all meas­ures bend
nor mar­vel if a thought should weigh a star
— dreads dying least; and less, that death should end)

how lucky lov­ers are (whose selves abide
under whatever shall dis­covered be)
whose ignor­ant each breath­ing dares to hide
more than most fab­ulous wis­dom fears to see

(who laugh and cry) who dream, cre­ate and kill
while the whole moves; and every part stands still:

That colon at the end always gets to me! Quite truly a hymn, I think, to the cre­at­ive power of love, the inno­cence and strength and dar­ing of it. And I like the mat­ter-of-fact­ness of “laugh and cry” slily inser­ted as an aside in brack­ets, because life (and par­tic­u­larly life in love! don’t we know it…) is nev­er about laugh­ing only, but about exper­i­en­cing the full intens­ity of every part of it, no mat­ter how pleas­ur­able or painful.
Oh, and would­n’t you know Cum­mings: it’s of course an Itali­an son­net, all circular. 🙂

So, what’s your favour­ite love poem?