Comment 10 of 10, added on May 20th, 2009 at 2:58 AM.

Friends,
Withy all due respect to your intellectual perceptions, this poem went straight into me as a tale related around the experience of seeing a fellow being in spiritual need and, without a thought for reputation and personal safety, responding.
I have been in a few situations where my fellows looked aghast as I assisted someone in distress who did not fit into their world: a street person lunging into traffic, a homeless woman weeping on a street corner, a newly-blind man without a dog or a cane who was falling into the bushes.
Helping people in this way can be a very difficult situation. The ego warns us not to get involved. We might catch lice, we might get robbed, we might be forced to weep in public for the pain of another. To me, that was what Cummings was talking about when he spoke of being banged by a million, billion, trillion stars.
Lovingly, Sonam

Sonam from United States

Comment 8 of 10, added on May 1st, 2006 at 1:16 PM.

I would have to agree with others below who point to the biblical references in this poem. Our very first clue is “fallen amongst thieves,” i.e. Christ on the cross between two thieves; and, of course, the good Samaritan story, as others have pointed out. However, in my view, cummings is only using this as a allegorical vehicle. The clue here is the “pinkish” vomit. I believe this to be a reference to socialists and/or communists who openly criticized cummings during his career.

These “staunch” citizens are seeing the “Christ-like” character through their own “pinkish” filters, their judgmental (frozen) and condescending (swaddled) approach, rightly described as “vomit” by cummings. In the Bible, Christ himself often criticized religious zealots as “hypocrites and vipers.” The protagonist is rejecting their feigned overtures (which noticed nobody). He does not wish to rise; he has exchanged “consciousness” (in this context referring to “hypercivic zeal”) for a changeless grin. He’s not taking himself so seriously, at least not as seriously as those seeing through filters of “pinkish” vomit. He is heart-connected but in a natural way (one hand did nothing on the vest), and, to a degree (button solemnly inert), earthy, embodied (clenched weakly dirt).

And lastly, to our good Samaritan: This is a guess here, but I’m thinking the good Samaritan and the Christ-like figure are one and the same. Perhaps they were one and the same from the beginning, or perhaps they have merged through genuine empathy – “i put him ALL into my arms.” – which, if true, gives the poet another ‘crack’ at the contrived concern of the “staunch and Meal citizens” (who just might, in the end, be the thieves also!). The narrator, whoever he is, is also saying that he does not have all the answers either. In fact, he’s “staggering” humbly – “banged with terror” – through the universe looking for… what? True empathy? Authenticity? Or, perhaps Truth itself…

Brian Haley from Canada