It's not just chocolates, red roses or diamonds. Songs and poems also have their place in love stories.
E.E. Cummings had a good share of love poems, quite a number of them are a favorite of many. And some of them like this poem I Carry Your Heart With Me (I Carry It In) is even a favorite one during weddings. Here is its 1st stanza:
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)
From that 1st stanza of the poem alone, I can easily say that this is an exquisite delight for a bride to hear from her groom on their wedding day. And should it be the bride who would say these lines to her groom, I think he would blush. He would blush with pleasure. It is a day of commitments and declarations, after all. It is a day of rainbows and promises. The bride and the groom both want their hearts, their lives to be joined together.
Now to hear Cummings read the poem to us is a different experience altogether. It is decidedly different from reading it ourselves on a printed page or hearing it spoken by another person. It is significantly different, I think, because it somehow connects us to the author in the here and now. It is also like being taken through space and time to that very moment when Cummings finished writing it.
While Cummings could not boast of having an untroubled love life when he was still alive, this poem reflects his understanding of the ways, the nuances of love. It seems to be a deceptively easy poem to write but it only appears to be so because Cummings simply had the brilliant gift of words.
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)
That secret of being carried in our loved one's heart, to be part of him or her in every way is one timeless dream, desire between a couple in love. Cummings knew and undestood that secret. And as we listen to him read about it today, we are also aware (made aware) that it is one secret that like him, our hearts also know and understand.
