A Refutation of E.E. Cummings’ “I Carry Your Heart with Me”
The first two lines of this E.E. Cummings poem are so often quoted that they’ve sadly been reduced to cliché. I can honestly say that I enjoy and admire Cummings’ poetry. For that reason, I have read and (over)analyzed this poem so many times that I’ve rendered myself incapable of reading it simply as a sweet message conveying the purest love.
I do not carry your heart with me. Nor does it reside in mine. I have made a room for you in my heart. The room is warm and hygge (a wonderful concept I once heard Rick Steves explain on NPR). But your heart does not reside in it. No, I refuse to insult you by implying that your heart is so simple and small as to fit inside that of another. Try as I might to create a facsimile of your heart in that room I’ve made for it, that facsimile will not (and should not) be your heart. Your heart belongs to you. If I carried it in mine, it would not belong to you anymore. And you cannot give something that no longer belongs to you to another. What a Catch-22.
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
You are not my world, and I can only hope that I am not yours. To be one’s world. You were an astronaut, deployed to find a new planet. Trapped in my gravitational field, you found yourself in a strange place that bore my name. Everywhere you look, you see me and only me. You’ve lost yourself in this world that is me. Hungry, cold, and without your own way (it’s lost like you), you begin to feast on whatever resources I have to offer. I am your world, and like the human that you are, you expect your world to nourish you. To sustain you. Eat me, drink me, drain me. There is no more for me to give.
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
The egocentric romantic in me wants to believe in the idea that whatever exists between us (yes, between us specifically) keeps the stars where they belong and contributes to the pulsing lifeforce that streams through all things. Maybe it does in its own small way. In the (likely) event that it does not: I’m content to feel here on earth. And if my soul somehow drifts lazily toward divine realms reserved for only the truest of lovers, I’ll let it.
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 don’t.
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)