It's getting so chilly here. e. e. cummings was the first poet I really "got" way back in high school when they were trying to teach me how to write a sentence (in 10th grade, for heaven's sake! Public education is really a snake pit.). He wrote this in 1923. O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

fingers of

prurient philosophers pinched

and

poked

thee

, has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

beauty . how

often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

(but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)