N(o)w

N(o)w - meaning Summary

Arrival and Ecstatic Rupture

Cummings' poem dramatizes an abrupt, elemental upheaval that collapses ordinary language and perception into a fractured, ecstatic present. Thunder and lightning break the ‘‘disappeared’’ world, voices and roofs roar, and sleep or death is suggested then overturned by birdsong and green renewal. The poem traces a violent transition from silence and fragmentation to communal, sensory awakening, using compressed, playful syntax to stage rebirth and the sudden arrival of meaning.