An e. e. cummings Poem For Valentine's Day

I will never forget reading e. e. cummings' poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town" my sophomore year in high school. His poetry, so different from anything else I'd ever heard, rocked my world. Cummings ignored convention in favor of exploration in everything from punctuation to capitalization. Although this is a short post, it's a fantastic Valentine's Day post because e. e. cummings writes about love better than anyone else. To prove it, my favorite of  his poems about love -- and possibly my favorite poem of all:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

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

 Poem courtesy of Poets.org. 

 Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you and yours are enjoying the day.

And happy reading, of course!