Buffalo Bill's Defunct

Lately, the final lines of an ee cummings poem have been repeatedly announcing themselves (as thoughts and memories sometimes do), into my mind-space. And maybe it’s a confluence, or synchronicity thing; I have also seen this poem mentioned in the news a couple of times, just in the last two days, at the same time that it keeps bubbling into my consciousness. Dick Cavett mentioned it in a column about Bobby Fisher, here:

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/was-it-only-a-game/index.html?ref=opinion

Anyway, this is one of the many wonderful poems first brought to me by my exemplary high school English teacher, and dear friend, Nancy Newcomb Norton. Back in the late 60’s, in a little town (Blytheville) in the State of Arkansas, we got a very fine secondary education, and Nancy was a big part of that.

I’ve always found this poem disturbing. The juxtaposition of beauty with death, even with wanton killing, cuts to the (sometimes very painful, always paradoxical) heart of the human condition. And there is an odd twist: I have always been told that William Cody, or "Buffalo Bill," was some sort of relative of mine. Perhaps I feel a bit responsible for him. Anyway, the question at the end of this poem seems to stand up and defy our human dilemma... and sometimes I find it easy to adopt it as my own question, posed again and again to some unknown (or known) entity of destruction. How DO you like your blue-eyed boy, now, Mr. Death?

Here's the poem (click this link to see it as it should be formatted, I can't seem to get it right using this blogger editor!):

Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill’s

defunct

who used to ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons justlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what I want to know is

how do you like your blue-eyed boy

Mister Death

ee cummings