Some time in the early or mid-70s, when I was home on break from medical school, and my brother was an undergraduate, he showed me a poem he had to interpret as part of an English class assignment.
I don’t remember if he specifically asked for my help; in fact, I don’t remember anything he said, but I DO remember interpreting the poem.
Sometime later, curious as to what had transpired in class, I asked him what his teacher said about the interpretation. I remember him saying that the teacher had thought the interpretation was completely off the mark, and that the poem meant absolutely no such thing in terms of what I had suggested.
At this point, I also remember feeling surprised and making some arrogant remark or other.
Of course, I was disappointed.
I wanted feedback – and strokes – and the abruptness and finality of this dismissal struck me as somewhat narrow-minded, but that was none of my business.

On a fundamental level, I didn’t need to be told that I was right.
As far as I was concerned, the metaphor I had found was apt.
And pardon the simile / cliché, but it fit the poem like a glove.
Well…at least I thought so.
Because I was young and doubted that another metaphor would fit better, you can understand my hubris.
These days, my feeling is that if other metaphors fit and appeal more to other ideological or personal tastes, then so be it.

What strikes me today is that not only was I satisfied with my own interpretation – and in an unusually authoritative way – but that had I found such immense pleasure in the process of interpretation.

At the time, I let all of that pleasure go.
I had a medical career to pursue.

It would be, perhaps, 15 years before I would return to that pleasure and tentatively begin to pursue it.
Now, about 35 years later, I find that the work of interpretation – reading between the lines – is (and always was) my calling.

Here, then, is that poem followed by my line-by-line interpretation.
Before now, I had never written this interpretation down, but it has been with me ever since that one evening with my brother.

[in Just-], by E.E. Cummings

At some point during the process of thinking about the successive images of spring, and mud, and marbles, it became clear to me that interpreting spring as a metaphor for birth made the most sense.
And, lest you think I was influenced by my eventual profession as ob/gyn, this interpretation came at least 5 years before I even began my training as an obstetrician.
So, with the concept of Birth as the metaphoric theme, what is

in Just-

and why is it on a separate line?
my sense about this says that it’s one word, i.e. “unjust” as well as “in just.
In just implies immediacy as in “just now…”
which is the very moment of birth…
an archetypal paradox of simultaneous hopeful beginnings, and wistful endings i.e. the very moment that ends our prenatal paradise.
And it’s this ending, as experienced in our moments-old post-natal consciousness, that would be felt as unjust.
Why else do we cry…except for that impersonally applied smack on our upside-down butt (and something I’ve never seen done, nor done myself, professionally speaking)?

spring when the world is mud-

spring, of course, is the metaphoric time when Nature is busy with births…
lambing, and so-forth.
mud is an apt metaphor for a nicely rich, moist, and messy environment…
something like an endometrium…or a placenta…
“when” is the world like this?
just before birth, naturally.

luscious the little

this line doesn’t seem to stand on its own, but it bridges the gap between two separate realities…
mud-luscious takes us back to the placenta
and we’re certainly little at that moment…
but little lame leads us into the world of that strange grownup…
a world in which we are almost literally lame ourselves.

lame balloonman

lame, in Latin, is Claudius…
but while Oedipus means swollen foot in Greek, I think the freudian concept has some comic relevance here.
in any case, who is this balloonman?
he seems a bit unsavory, even though he’s just handicapped…
does the balloon business refer to the edematous swelling of his feet…
he’s the adult here, and the poem refers to children later on…
he clearly has something that children want…
but there’s this un-just / injustice business…

if he has something to do with birth, then he’s either father (as a character in our oedipal drama) or obstetrician (as the man who collects children around him) or some deity who’s responsible for the whole shebang.

whistles far and wee

and so, this balloon-selling whistler would have to be the one responsible for calling the children out of paradise and into the cold, cruel world…
something of a pied piper…but not simply that…
in any case, we all come…

and eddieandbill come

twins, perhaps…
pairs of opposites…
but all of us, naturally

running from marbles and

this is one of my favorite images, and perhaps the thing that really did it for me in suggesting Birth…
and that’s because one has to get into a fetal position to play marbles…
enough said…

piracies and its

piracies would mean being out on the high seas…
and floating in amniotic fluid is where we do all of our prenatal playing…

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

amniotic fluid, again…

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee

now, this lame whistler is queer and old…
most definitely a less savory character than before…
some strange old deity…
not just to us as neonates…
but he remains that way to us even as adults, doesn’t he…?
he has this power to whistle…
and we are powerless to resist…
instead, we even come willingly…
trustingly…
no matter that he’s the apparent cause of this in/un-justice…
the sexual undertones of growing up are impossible to ignore, but he’s not just some sexual predator…
he’s simply elderly in the way we tend to view the aged when we’re very, very young

and bettyandisbel come dancing

the Yin to our Yang…
all of us…
and this time, dancing…
alive and kicking, as it were…

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

hop-scotch being another one of our prenatal activities…
letting everyone (especially mom) know that we’re busy playing…
and of course, that jump-rope is our umbilical cord…

it’s
spring
and
the
           goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

and now, finally, this lame, queer, old balloonman is also goat-footed…
which would make him Pan…who, according to sources cited in Wikipedia, is connected to fertility and the season of spring.

Birth is a complex, archetypal motif…
and with spring as a metaphor for birth, the poem would then be ascribing to birth (and to Pan) the epithet “Unjust.”
And this darker concept is something more in tune with the philosophy of Silenius, the drunken, old sensualist…who is connected to Pan through various permutations of the Satyrs…
According to another Wikipedia source, Silenius is not only the teacher and faithful companion of Dionysus, but he shared with King Midas a pessimistic philosophy: “That the best thing for a man is not to be born, and if already born, to die as soon as possible.”

But it’s not simply Birth that we’re dealing with, and this is where my experience as an obstetrician can’t help but intrude.
This balloonMan personifies the call to birth.
He’s the mysterious force behind that moment when labor pains begin – the force that tells the uterus to begin the contractions that must irrevocably end our prenatal idyll.
So, as the mysterious force of Nature responsible for ending our nine month paradise, he’s not just physiology.
Not according to the poets, anyway.
But THAT’s why he’s considered unjust.

The poem is written from an adult perspective, and according to the title, it carries a tinge of resentment towards birth and the force of Nature that requires it.
It’s also a nostalgic musing about our lost pre- and peri-natal innocence that, interestingly and of course, Oedipally, ignores the perspective of the mother. She too hears the balloonman’s whistle and probably agrees with the “unjust” sentiment, but certainly for her own painful reasons.

Finally, this Pan character, this personification of the call to birth, is carrying balloons – balloons being almost the exact shape of a pregnant uterus. It’s as if he’s a kind of god (or saint) carrying his attribute – the sign by which he can be identified – making him a sort of natural, albeit comically accoutred, obstetrician.

Of course, according to that Wikipedia source, Pan is also the god of theatrical criticism.
As such, maybe he should be carrying a Playbill or some other attribute to clearly identify himself.
Perhaps, even, that’s what Cummings was thinking when, in the program to his first play, HIM, he provided a warning to the audience:
“Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff—relax, stop wondering what it’s all ‘about’—like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this Play isn’t ‘about,’ it simply is. Don’t try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON’T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU.”

I suppose then, that Cummings was also commenting on the odd relationship between one’s literary babies and the necessity of critics…but the poem was published in 1920, and the play first performed in 1928.
Even so…this Pan / Silenius darkness that we’re born into JUST is…
If we can’t understand the pessimism, the physiology, or the poetry we can certainly do our best to relax and let it understand us…
whatever he meant.

kristo