Ion Square

Frontman Kele Okereke told Rolling Stone that his favorite song on Intimacy is this song, "because it evokes a really great time in a relationship when everything was going right."

This features lyrics from E. E. Cummings' poem I Carry Your Heart with Me, which has been a favorite selection at weddings for many years. It has also featured a number of times in popular culture. For instance, American guitarist Michael Hedges set it to music on his 1990 Taproot album with backing vocals provided by David Crosby and Graham Nash. Also, in the 2005 movie In Her Shoes starring Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette, I Carry Your Heart with Me is read by Diaz at the climatic wedding scene. American poet E(dward) E(stlin) Cummings (1894-1962) was initially well known for the idiosyncratic punctuation and typography of his poems ( he always wrote his name as 'e.e. cummings'). However in time their lyrical power became recognized. I Carry Your Heart with Me was published in 1958 in his collection 95 Poems. Okereke first came across this poem at school and he was reminded of it when he wrote this song. He explained on his record label's website: "So we called his estate and asked if we could use it. So that's what the chorus is. It really was right for the song. It's the best feeling in the world, feeling comfortable with someone, and being in love. When it ends it's hard, obviously, but when it's great it's the best thing in the world. So yeah, I wanted to end a note of positively."

Okereke said of this six-and-a-half minute techno-psychedelic love song on his record label's website in 2008: "I wrote the words two years ago. It's just about being in love with someone and the bad stuff having not appeared yet on the horizon. It's about being comfortable with someone."