To Lakshmi

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in you most frail gestures 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 always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour 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.

e.e. cummings