Penelope Evans

“Für Einen

Die Andern sind das weite Meer.
Du aber bist der Hafen.
So glaube mir: kannst ruhig schlafen,
Ich steure immer wieder her.

Denn all die Stürme, die mich trafen,
Sie ließen meine Segel leer.
Die Andern sind das bunte Meer,
Du aber bist der Hafen.

Du bist der Leuchtturm. Letztes Ziel.
Kannst Liebster, ruhig schlafen.
Die Andern... das ist Wellenspiel,

Du aber bist der Hafen.”
― Mascha Kaléko

“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”
― E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems

“Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness”
― E.E. Cummings, Poems, 1923-1954