56 the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
E. E. Cummings
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also, with the church’s protestant blessings
daughters, unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things-
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
….the Cambridge ladies do not care, above Cambridge
if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless,
the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.
“The Cambridge Ladies Who Live in Unfurnished Souls” by E. E. Cummings was originally published in 1923 and is in the public domain. It was accessed at https://poets.org/poem/cambridge-ladies-who-live-furnished-souls.