"pity this busy monster, manunkind" is a poem by American poet E. E. Cummings, first published in his 1944 book 1 × 1.
To Cummings, the "busy monster" is a society bent on subverting nature and individual humanity, the loss of which is to be mourned.
In closing, the poem's speaker suggests – with an ironic optimism – an escape to "a hell of a good universe next door".
[3][4] As with many of Cummings's poems, his idiosyncratic orthography and grammar provide an immediacy to the printed words.
[2] Like other modernist poets, Cummings uses unusual typography to draw focus to the typewriter as an instrument of the machine age.