Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 9-10
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
- Now the speaker makes his lover seem even more powerful. Not only can she open him up at will, she can also close him back down again just by wishing it.
- What's crazy is that the speaker doesn't seem to mind at all. He says that this happens "beautifully,suddenly."
- Wow. It seems like this girl (and we're just assuming here that the speaker is male, the addressed female) can do no wrong in his eyes.
- Here again, we have a case of smooshed words, where "beautifully" and "suddenly" become kind of the same idea.
Lines 11-12
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
- Cummings brings back the flower simile here, connecting it now with the closing of the speaker's emotions.
- He also brings back the idea of seasons. While not actually using the word "winter," he alludes to the cold season by talking about snow.
- It's interesting that he says the "heart" of the rose is the thing that senses the cold coming.
- The word "heart," of course, pops up in love poems just about as much as roses do.
- Though a literal heart's main job is to pump blood, metaphorical hearts pump love and every other emotion through our bodies.
- Here, the heart isn't being all warm and fuzzy, though. It's advising the flower to batten down the hatches, because the bitter cold of winter is ahead.
- Once again, this allusion to the seasons seems to give the speaker's lover the same unstoppable power that the turning of the year has over flowers.