The Good Samaritan and e.e. cummings

This week, at Bidwell Presbyterian, we're learning about how to follow Jesus through the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Here's the stunning take on Jesus's words by the underrated 20th century poet, e.e. cummings.


I'll let the poem speak for itself:

a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat 

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin 

whereon a dozen staunch and Meal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because 

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise 

one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert. 

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars