the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church's protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things—
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
.... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy


E. E. Cummings 1894–1962

[raise the shade]

raise the shade will youse dearie?
rain
wouldn’t that


get yer goat but
we don’t care do
we dearie we should
worry about the rain


huh
dearie?
yknow
i’m


sorry for awl the
poor girls that
gets up god
knows when every



day of their
lives
aint you,
oo-oo. dearie


not so
hard dear


you’re killing me



E. E. Cummings, “raise the shade” from Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George J. Firmage. Source: Poetry Foundation Complete Poems 1904-1962 (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1991)

Reunion

This is my past where no one knows me.
These are my friends whom I can’t name—
 Here in a field where no one chose me,
 The faces older, the voices the same.

 Why does this stranger rise to greet me?
 What is the joke that makes him smile,
 As he calls the children together to meet me,
 Bringing them forward in single file?

 I nod pretending to recognize them,
 Not knowing exactly what I should say.
 Why does my presence seem to surprise them?
 Who is the woman who turns away?

 Is this my home or an illusion?
 The bread on the table smells achingly real.
 Must I at last solve my confusion,
 Or is confusion all I can feel?



Poem copyright ©2010 by Dana Gioia, whose most recent book of poetry is Interrogations at Noon, Graywolf Press, 2001. Source: Poetry Foundation