Favorite Poem for National Poetry Month

For National Poetry Month I want to post my all-time favorite poem, which is by e. e. cummings. I love cummings' poetry because of the way he plays with punctuation and spacing. I also love his metaphors and images. Also his irreverence for the conventional and corresponding deep reverence for real life and love and all that good stuff.


somewhere i have never traveled,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 skillfully,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 this 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

You can read more e. e. cummings here. Enjoy National Poetry Month. Yes, I don't live in the US. But I am an American, so I can still celebrate American national events here.

Also, go read a very beautiful poem at Feministe by Nikki Giovanni.