somewhere
i have never travelled
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