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

Untitled, pastel on chipboard, iron frame. 

In memoriam Marisa Merz, Italian, 1926-2019.  Loaned by Glenstone Museum, Maryland to the Philadelphia Art Museum

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;

Untitled, copper, wire, nails, no date. 

In memoriam Marisa Merz, Italian, 1926-2019. Courtesy of the Fondazione Merz on loan to the Philadelphia Art Museum

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