Now I remember why I love literature so much....

The English department had a textbook presentation yesterday, and I found myself--instead of paying attention to the presenter's pitch, thumbing through the pages of one of the 11th grade teacher's editions, and I happened upon this poem. I remember reading it in Poetry and Poetics class as an English major undergrad. at NGCSU. I LOVE it. It has a sort of subjective and tactile mystery to it. It makes me think about things other than the rocky state of education in Georgia right now and how I used to love a good poem--just because....And note the typography--it's written like that ON PURPOSE. Gotta love e.e. cummings....

"somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond"
--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