somewhere i have never travelled

me
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

came across this while trawling online. I had forgotten how much I love this poem.

I first heard it read aloud by Ron Perlman playing the Beast in a short-lived tv series called Beauty and the Beast, where a modern monstrous-looking man-beast (Perlman) falls in love with a beautiful reporter in modern day New York.

I don't entirely get the imagery sometimes but i like the mood and the tone. I think there is something in there of the intense way human beings interact with each other and the way we open each other up to new understandings and perspectives. On the surface, the poem seems obviously skewed towards the emotional intimacy you find in a romantic relationship. But I think there is more behind it.
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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 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