Cummings' struggle against structuralism and against needing to quantify and to understand in concrete, certain form is advanced here in a bitter, eloquent criticism noting the limits of and condemning "the machines" for their sacriligious "translation", "accuracy", and "program". A woman or a man, this is a thing that shouts and clings, and something that may "easily break in spite of the best overseeing"; what good is accuracy, and how important is the "delivery of the goods", if one loses by this knowledge and efficiency and "philosophy" the invaluable, pure sensation itself, if one forgets the immeasurable fragility of the rose? Is Spring merely a series of months, or is it "kissing and to sing"? Do not forget the sensation itself when you attempt to comprehend that sensation after the fact, because it was true only in that past moment before you undermined and contaminated it by running it through your human computer, before it became interpreted, in that moment that it was actually felt.

Cummings' is a religion of flowers: there is no room for mystery-less things in his world, and these machines are quite a self-defeating farce. The concept of a "second" is quite dangerous and a lie, while an "instant" is true and relevant. Machines, so certain of themselves, must necessarily be quite wrong: for they lie when they say they refute mystery, and all measurement loses in the translation the importance and the secrets of the thing.

The steady advance of technology was a gradual encroachment upon the world of Cummings. Do you think he cares what weather is forecasted for tomorrow? Cummings preferred hope to a weather forecast.

"Partly sunny" or "partly cloudy", these say nothing of the tint of the sky, the activity of the birds, or the character of the silence filling the air. "Partly sunny" or "partly cloudy" forgets and destroys the world.


voices to voices,lip to lip is from Cummings' is 5.