Poetry

[pixkris]

Pick your favorite poem and reproduce it or link to it.


[somewhere i have never travelled] ee 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 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


a) Why do you like this poem?
The first time I read this poem, it sang to me. I have no better way to explain it except to say that it somehow was about me, about my life, about my loves. This poem captures something about human fragility and love that I have never seen expressed more eloquently.

b) What is your favorite part of the poem?
I have favorite lines (the last stanza in particular destroys me), but I cannot dissect the poem more than that. It is a perfect whole.


c) How did you first run across this poem?
I don't remember.