March 23rdI thank you God for most this amazing
‘I THANK YOU GOD’
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings :and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened) [ee cummings]
This is one of my favourite poems, a great poem for spring and the Easter season. The natural world, for cummings, was always a key to apprehending truth. In nature’s beauty, its complexity, and its vastness, nature testifies to its Creator. In stanza three Cummings expresses incredulity that, given this testimony, any human being should ever doubt God’s existence… ‘everything which is natural which is infinite which is Yes’
‘yes’ – what a great descriptor of God whom we struggle to understand and name but forever fall short of full comprehension.
The last two lines evoke, for me, Mary’s encounter with Jesus in the garden after the resurrection as she experiences a radical change from grief and misunderstanding to recognition of Jesus.
Here is a musical setting of the poem.
‘I thank you God for most this amazing’