Breath of My Breath
Breath of My Breath - meaning Summary
Passion as Destructive Union
The poem presents a speaker addressing an intense lover, asking for intimate union that mixes bodies and sensations. Cummings uses violent, animalistic imagery—tigers, leopards, carving—to portray passion as both rapturous and destructive. The second half shifts to bleak urban and cosmic images—greys, dead stars, dawn—suggesting emotional exhaustion or the aftermath of desire. The short final line reduces the beloved to an objectified, exhausted "poetic carcass," implying collapse after ecstasy.
Read Complete Analysesnearer:breath of my breath:take not they tingling limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal letting they tigers of smooth sweetness steal slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling: deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing swiftness plunge these leopards of white ream this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing flower of madness on gritted lips and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips. Querying greys between mouthed houses curl thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane, the poetic carcass of a girl
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