III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

Analysis, meaning and summary of e.e. cummings's poem Spring is like a perhaps hand

6 Comments

  1. Frater Gregorius says:

    It takes genius to speak with such beauty. A verbal painting seen only with the “mind’s eye”.

    Thank you, e.e., wherever you are, far or wee.

  2. ana says:

    you know i think as one of our friends said before it stands for young people and also it wants to say that enjoy your youth maybe

  3. marmelade says:

    I think of this poem as a metaphor for young people . . . they are the spring that changes everything while (hopefully) breaking nothing. All the while, older people stare in wonder, and maybe offer a few suggestions on how things should be arranged.

  4. Nancy Sullivan says:

    The beginning of spring is always tentative. A few blossoms here and there, some flowering trees there, then cold again, and maybe some flowers don’t survive. Maybe this is the first day of spring and we won’t have cold again — and maybe not. Perhaps. Were those flowers there yesterday and I didn’t notice? Maybe– perhaps. A little color here and a little there, and then a wind that covers the ground with delicate petals, a rearrangement. It’s delicate, temporary,full of change — not full blown summer or late spring.

  5. Jodi says:

    i take this poem to comment on the way spring can come in and slightly alter things without destroying them or changing them beyond recognition. time is a cumulative process, not a series of separate seasons.

    spring is another phase of life, it is a time when some things die and others are born, but that which is new does not destroy the (memory of the) old.

    it’s a beautiful sentiment and a beautiful poem.

  6. jenn says:

    okay basically the poem is about how spring comes rrushing in silently and it suddenly changes everything around (the window scene) and the last line just says how it comes and goes with nothing in its way
    lucky, lucky spring

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