somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
- E.E. Cummings
{via Poets.org}
1 comment:
Can we talk cummings?
let's start with a bold statement: he was the most ingenious american poet of the 20th century.
let's continue with how he captures such intense feeling in a single quasi-sensical phrase:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)
we'll then move on to the wonder with which he sums up the entire human condition (with up so many floating bells down)
don't forget that he perfectly captures the heady first days of new love (i like my body when it is with your
body.)
almost finished when we talk about how lewdly hilarious he was (may i feel said he)
and finally we'll stand in amazement at his ability to deconstruct the building blocks of syntax and language and put them back together--bigger than the sum of their cold, dry parts-- hot, pulsing, alive.
epilogue: "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting."
somehow i had forgotten that i love cummings. thank you for reminding me sweet sassy k.
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