a poem from e.e. cummings

self-portrait, oil painting. cummings in the 1950s. source: Modern American Poets

american poet e.e. cummings wrote this elegiac poem about william cody:

Buffalo Bill's

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death


i've always liked this poem because of its layered tone. it's as if cummings is celebrating and mocking buffalo bill (and, by extension, american mythology) at the same time. (in this way, it resembles another cummings poem, "next to of course god america i.")

plus he's mocking death. can death handle buffalo bill?