#anne barton

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

E. E. Cummings - 1894-1962

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 it 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

Film enclosed - Hannah and her sisters

Short bare Analysis - “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” is one such poem. At its most immediate level, it is a poem that honors an inexplicable mystery: how, through the experience of love, one human being can awaken something in the beloved that nothing or no one else has ever managed to touch.