For my lovely Sandra, the prettiest postmistress in Norfolk.

Comments

1. Gatz says

   01/12/2016 at 21:20

   My sister had me read this at her wedding last year (Just I drew breath to start a small child in the gathering exclaimed, ‘I want Peppa Pig’ ‘I’m sorry, darling, but I’ve only got ee cummings with me.’)

   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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   • Gatz says

     01/12/2016 at 21:21

     I’ve just remembered, I read it aloud a couple of times as we got suited and booted in our hotel room. After the first run through The Light looked puzzled and asked me, ‘Who’s Lorraine?’

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     • Kid Dynamite says

       01/12/2016 at 21:32

       For years I thought the chorus of Lou Reed’s Wild Child was “and then we spoke of the rain”

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       • IanP says

         01/12/2016 at 22:44

         Until about five seconds ago, so did I. And I’ve been listening to that song for more than 40 years

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2. Jeff says

   02/12/2016 at 00:14

   Le Trump has smaller hands than Lorraine. I GUARANTEE it.

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3. mikethep says

   02/12/2016 at 02:21

   Big fan here. His love poems are wonderfully passionate, not to say lustful.

   Your Little Voice
   your little voice
   Over the wires came leaping
   and i felt suddenly
   dizzy
   With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
   wee skipping high-heeled flames
   courtesied before my eyes
   or twinkling over to my side
   Looked up
   with impertinently exquisite faces
   floating hands were laid upon me
   I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
   up
   Up
   with the pale important
   stars and the Humorous
   moon
   dear girl
   How i was crazy how i cried when i heard
   over time
   and tide and death
   leaping
   Sweetly
   your voice

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