09/26/2009 AUTUMN EVENING PLEASURE

I want to share here a poem I just love. My sister found this way back in 1980-something and wrote it down to show me. It's ee cummings' poetry and there is something about his use of words, his rhythms and the pictures he paints on my heart and in my mind, that have endeared this work to me all these years. I highly recommend that you enjoy this poem alone, curled up in a big chair with a cup of tea or cocoa, fireplace lit, while softly playing Respighi's Ancient Aires and Dances, the best selection being "Siciliana". Enjoy! Let me know if you liked the poetry and the music. It absolutely took my breath away. Also explore Sibelius' work, "Finlandia". Just beautiful. And for those of you who happen to like baroque music, there is a little-known piece by (of all things!) a bluegrass/rock/jazz band called Dixie Dregs...it's called "Go For Baroque" and is a beautiful baroque piece played by fiddlers and guitarists. Awesome.

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled

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 skillfully, 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

ee cummings