Thursday 10 January 2008

Viva ee cummings

somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, you 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 skillfully, 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 colour 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

-- ee cummings

from the collection Viva 1931

2 comments:

Flora Dora Dobson said...

Thank you, thank you I adore this poem was anything more beautiful ever written about hands?

Anonymous said...

The poem itself is not about hands. He says that not even the rain has such small hands because not even the rain, small particles of water, mother nature, can penetrate him as deep as this woman can. He is saying that he would die for her, live for her, whatever she needs.She is 'frail' and has 'intense fragility', but it encompasses him, and controls him in ways 'gladly beyond any experience'