Yo te quiero mucho, Valentine's Day and e.e. cummings

In 2009, I made a promise to myself that I would do a series of collage entitled, "yo te quiero mucho."  It has taken me all this time to establish a routine to keep this personal commitment.

Thus far, I've completed six of 19.  I had hoped to call the project "finished" by the end of January but numerous technical problems kept interfering with that deadline: acrylics too old or too cold, no local shop to photocopy images, bad weather, and my own slow process in a not very ideal work environment.

TB, Zurich, Switzerland, 1967 © Z. Hecht

I've left three of the collages for last of the those people who had the most profound influence on my love life, something in line with e.e. cummings poem:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 

The poem remains under copyright to the e.e.cummings estate