Sunday Sonnet*

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 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

Another silly summer job was being a torch lady (nope, not belting out Gloria Gaynor in drag)  - a lovely old-fashioned role, showing people to their seats in a cinema. I saw Hannah and her Sisters about 150 times that summer, and was word perfect. Not quite so enraptured with Karate Kid II; then I passed the time accidentally landing snogging couples in the full searchlight of my little torch. Anyway, I thought that the bookshop scene and subsequent reading of ee cummings was the most romantic thing I had ever seen in 19 years. Gorgeous film, gorgeous poem.

*Am assuming you're over this by now