Woman in Poetry

Beloved Woman, you have been in the heart and imagination of poets throughout the ages for indeed your essence has the power to touch, captivate, inspire, empower and give joy. You have graced me all my life and made it a joyful celebration for your presence in myriads of moments; and so I share to you this poem by e.e. cummings which expresses eloquently a slice of how and what it means:

"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 you 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"

FROM: Selden Rodman,ed. One Hundred American Poems (p. 153)
A Mentor Book 1948

One Hundred American Poems