If you see me muttering to myself while walking around campus, I may be dredging up poems from memory. Here are two of my favorites from E. E. Cummings that I was recalling earlier today ...

when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circustent
and everything began

when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because



pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
-- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                                 A world of made
is not a world of born -- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if -- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go