such small hands

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 beacuse they are too near.

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have shut 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 beautifull, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow everywhere carefully descending;

nothing which we are to percieve in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colours 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 oceans)
nobody, not even the rain has such small hands

e.e. cummings