In Cummings' well-known 1926 poem "in Just--," boys and girls are playing in the park on an early spring day, the sort of day when children love to stomp through puddles of springtime mud and rainwater. Then a little lame balloon man shows up. He whistles to attract the youngsters' attention, they happily abandon their childish games such as marbles and hopscotch, and they come running toward the balloonman. To readers over the past eight decades the balloonman in the midst of that simple scene has always suggested a variety of meanings, some sensible and some just plain silly. Most often, however, the balloonman has been taken as an allusion to the satyrs of classical mythology. As we shall see, it is only a short step or two from seeing the balloonman as a satyr to seeing the poem as a symbolic treatment of the onset of sexual maturity. In other words, the poem's main subject is the universal experience of coming of age sexually.
For anyone familiar with classical mythology it is hard to miss the reference to satyrs. Satyrs were humans from the waist up and goats from the waist down, that is, they were "goat-footed." On a literal level, Cummings' balloonman may be a poor lame old man who can find no better-paying employment than selling balloons in the park, but on the figurative level calling the man "goat-footed" is linking him to mythological creatures like the famous satyr Pan. Also, linking him to Pan and the other satyrs is the same as saying that the balloonman is symbolic of strong sexual urges. After all, almost all the Greek and Roman tales about satyrs and nymphs and such creatures emphasize the strong sexual desires of such beings. Indeed, the identification of satyrs and nymphs with sexuality is so well-established that psychologists refer to excessive female sexuality as nymphomania and excessive male sexuality as satyriasis.
There are two other clear but somewhat less obvious links between the balloonman and Pan. First, satyrs are often depicted as old, baldheaded creatures, and Cummings does the same thing ("the queer / old balloonman"). Second, there is the link between the whistling of the balloonman and the satyr playing a high-pitched tune on his syrinx, also known as "pipes." According to the classical myths, Pan was chasing a nymph named Syrinx, trying to force himself on her sexually. In answer to her pleas to the gods for help, she was turned into reeds alongside the riverbank. The disappointed and frustrated Pan cut some of the reeds and bound them into a set of pipes. Whenever Pan played on those pipes, he was piping songs that were suggestive of his sexual attraction to the unfortunate nymph Syrinx, and that pretty clearly links the whistling of the balloonman to expressions of sexuality.
The allusion to the satyrs is, therefore, an important key to reading the poem sensibly. It's spring, the time of birth and new life. Yet another new generation of children ("eddieandbill" and "bettyandisbel") are being drawn away from childhood games as the universal sexual urge that expresses itself strongly in spring draws these children toward a more vibrant sexuality. The little lame balloonman is symbolic of the unruly, irresistible, and ancient drive to create new life. It is an urge that is felt everywhere ("far and wee," an expression that combines "far and wide" with a squeal of delight). As Tennyson said a bit more conventionally, "In spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
Over the years I have heard students misread the poem in various ways. Some literal-minded students have seen the balloonman as a sexual predator, a creepy old "queer" slinking about the park in search of chidren to molest; other students have read a literal cloven-footed Satan into the poem; still others have linked to the story of the Pied Piper. Once, however, the mythological allusion to Pan and the satyrs becomes clear, once we recognize in the poem the familiar experience of coming of age sexually, such bizarre or awkward or inaccurate readings of "in Just--" seem to fade away.