omnia et nihil

(A favorite from about age 15, this poem was one with which I particularly identified. I registered intensefragility.com ages ago, and still own it, though I’ve never really done anything with it. When I was around 18, I paid a calligrapher to draw the Chinese characters for “intense fragility” for me, with an eye toward getting a tattoo, one character on each wrist. I never did it, but, to this day, whenever I think of getting one, it’s the first thing that comes to mind.)

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