when?

e.e.cummings - a man who could write poetry as a musician would improvise in jazz, punctuation being his chord changes and his instrument (I always think of him holding a bass).

The following poem of his was once dedicated to me. Funny how only recently I came to unlock its message. And to wonder when it will happen again, the dedication, the magic, the tending, love and care.

When?

Let me cater to you:

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