A Sickly-Sweet Poem.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
(by e.e. cummings)

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 will easily 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



What was he going on about!?
A woman?
A man?
A loved child?
I am not certain,
but I have thought,
I have wondered,
I have decided in reading that he writes of hope because it is what is needed at the moment.

Not that life is so harsh, but understanding and wisdom can be so scarce and so many things happen that shoudn't. . . and so many are not happening that should . . . I have decided that the poem is about hope and, odd or not, this is what hope looks like to me.