i, kisser and syntactician

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

-e.e. cummings


although i flatter myself a counterexample to mr. cummings' characterization of syntacticians as people who cannot kiss well, i have always loved this poem. i wonder if cummings ever realized how very possible it is for syntax and passion to coincide. i suspect he must have, or he wouldn't have been so adept at flouting the rules to such marvelous effect. he must have been paying very close attention to syntax indeed, i would say.