"When the eyes are shut, the true world begins." —1948, Gore Vidal

the boy and the sea the ocean wanted me, and pulled me into his embrace, made me unconscious and tried to take my breath away, as i was letting go into the light of the sun, my mother heroic pulled me out of the waves, saving her only son. — dio d.

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 enclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) his 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 — e.e. cummings