"somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond"

While looking in the file cabinet for something else, I found a one-page paper I wrote for an intro to poetry class in September 1988. The poem the professor got me to analyze that week was this one, by e.e. cummings.

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 will easily 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 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 hands



Since some people out there in LJ-land have been discussing literary criticism & analysis lately, I figured I'd post a link to some discussion of this poem. Unfortunately, while this site on teaching poetry as a foreign language looks like it could be interesting, I can't guarantee it because it's loading very slowly tonight and I'm too tired to be patient. If any of you are morbidly curious and want to read what I wrote back in college, ( here it is. )