E. E. Cummings

Chansons Innocentes II

Summary


"Chansons Innocentes II" is a short poem by E. E. Cummings that conjures a world of tip-toeing ghosts, twitchy witches, and scuttling mice hiding in the dark. Written in Cummings' famously fragmented, sound-driven style, the poem builds from whispery creatures rustling and vanishing into a breathless warning about an old woman with a wart on her nose — one who knows the devil himself. The rhythm tumbles faster until it erupts in a wild, shrieking finale that is both comic and genuinely unsettling.

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hist     whist
little ghostthings
tip-toe
twinkle-toe

little twitchy
witches and tingling
goblins
hob-a-nob     hob-a-nob

little hoppy happy
toad in tweeds
tweeds
little itchy mousies

with scuttling
eyes     rustle and run     and
hidehidehide
whisk

whisk     look out for the old woman
with the wart on her nose
what she’ll do to yer
nobody knows

for she knows the devil     ooch
the devil     ouch
the devil
ach     the great

green
dancing
devil
devil

devil
devil
     wheeEEE

Credits

E. E. Cummings was an American modernist poet known for his radical experiments with typography, punctuation, and lowercase lettering. "Chansons Innocentes II" is part of his debut poetry collection *Tulips and Chimneys* (1923), where childlike imagery and playful sound effects serve as vehicles for something darker and wilder beneath the surface.
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