I thought about writing your Valentine letter on here so that it could be digitally immortalized, but then thought that it’s a bit too intimate to share with the entire world [or whatever infinitesimally tiny slice of it might ever visit this blog]. So, I decided to just share a little poetry with you. I gave you a picture of the two of us in Moonlight Kingdom character form which read “you are my grandest adventure.” This poem sort of exemplifies that notion and made be think of you and of us and this adventure we are living each day–this adventure which makes me always look forward to the next day and the days after and makes them all ripe with possibility. This poem is by E.E. Cummings, American poet, and was first published in 1931. He was a rebel and so we have that in common.
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 nearyour 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 roseor 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 [skilled] hands
This poem was written by a man for a woman, but it translates well either way. The last line indicates that the lover’s hands are smaller than the rain’s in the sense that the rain can open a rose with raindrops for hands.. so I think a better word here would be skilled and I have noted that in parentheses. Stanza 3 discusses the lover’s intense fragility which works well when talking of a woman, but also works well for us, in my opinion because I see your intense fragility as the vulnerability you work so hard to obscure and protect but that I can see right through and into… . Happy Valentine’s Day, Bean. I love you. Forever.
Dribs & Drabbles 