Somewhere I never travelled
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 nearyour 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 roseor if you 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 it’s 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.
This is one of my favorite poems ever. For lots of reasons, some that make me a little sad. I once read about a couple who engraved “nobody, not even the rain” on one wedding band and “has such small hands” on the other.
I wrote about the poem here when I first re-discovered it.
