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  somewhere i have never travelled  
   E.E.Cummings
  At a time when men are supposed to admire a woman with a good "six pack" it's refreshing to read a poem which praises a woman for her small hands.

The poem expresses well the way a man can be captivated by the feminine qualities of a woman. This appreciation of gender difference puts the poem within the traditionalist sphere, despite the modernistic form of the poem.

 

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 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
 

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