For rainy day people, maybe, although this is not a Gordon Lightfoot song. It is a forgotten poem, now remembered, from another one of my favourite poets. I often refer to my favourites – Dylan Thomas, W. B Yeats, Gerard Manly Hopkins and e.e.cummings as wordsmiths. They hammer out the most delicate poetry from the unyielding iron, and yes irony, of words. For example –
“Love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail”
This is the opening verse of a poem by e.e. cummings, “love is more thicker than forget”. Because I follow a number of poetry groups on Facebook, poems get posted regularly to my feed. I read the title and then the first line. Something was faintly familiar. I had read this poem before, many years ago. It may have been in an anthology I was using while teaching high school English in the ’70s. I’m not sure. I have read many poems by e.e. cummings over the years.
I copied the poem to read again and be reminded of the intricate workings of the enigmatic mind of the poet. Is love stronger than our memory, more elusive than our fumbling for names, times and occasions, as we age? I would make a more positive arrangement of these words to read:
“love is more thicker than forget
more frequent than recall
more often than a wave is wet
more seldom than to fall”
Maybe cummings was unhappy in love. I was more fortunate. I still believe that love is the constant which endures as we begin to lose everything. I changed “fail” in the original to “fall.” It’s personal. I fell in trying to complete an 800kms Camino. I had walked 500kms and missed a step – just one in all the thousands I had taken. However, I went back after five months to walk some more. I forgot about my fall. I refused to recall any of the negatives associated with it. In fact I seldom think of it.
The pictures are from the first 500kms of the Camino Frances, planning on taking more.