I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air —
Between the Heaves of Storm —

The Eyes around — had wrung them dry —
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset — when the King
Be witnessed — in the Room —

I willed my Keepsakes — Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable — and then it was
There interposed a Fly —

With Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz —
Between the light — and me —
And then the Windows failed — and then
I could not see to see—

                                                                               F591 (1863)  J465

The heavy irony of this poem renders it nearly comical: the last thing a dying person encounters, rather than the face of God or loving human faces is a "stumbling", buzzing housefly. What an anti-climax! Either in service of or mitigating the comedic potential of the irony is Dickinson's calm and precise narrative voice. She describes the scene from a vantage after death as if offering a summary statement, much in the manner we might make a report to the insurance company about some accident or loss.

        I was reminded of how Aldous Huxley took a very ample injected dose of LSD on his deathbed. It's a gamble. What if it had been a bad trip? What if, instead of grandeur, a tunnel of light, the welcoming face of a grand deity – he saw a fly? We'll never know. But what Dickinson is telling us here is that no matter what solemnity you endeavor, no matter what your plans or expectations, death takes what form it will.

Calliphora vomitoria (bluebottle fly)

        Beneath the stumble and bumble is the fact of flies: they are carrion creatures. This one, buzzing around a dying body, is a grim but fitting preamble to the corpse.  I can imagine how everyone in the room, including the dying person, wished to chase that fly outside if not smash it to smithereens. No one likes a fly in the house, especially flying around the face. But what could they do? Get the flyswatter out and attack the fly as it buzzes around the body? What a quandry. I wonder if Dickinson, who at least poetically enjoyed deathbed watches, had ever seen such an interposing fly and mulled over just what it would be like if it happened to her.

        It would be like being jilted. You expect the King in this ultimate moment and instead you get a bluebottle fly. And there's no going back and doing it over.

The poem is full of hearing and seeing. It begins with sound. There is a buzz, a stillness, and breaths. At the end, more buzzing. For sight there are the onlookers' eyes, once weeping but now "wrung…dry". The expected King is to be "witnessed". The Fly is seen at the end, it's uncertain blue body the last sight of the dying speaker. At the end, when the eyes, or Windows, fail, she can no longer look out; she can no longer see at all.

Dickinson writes the poem as a double flashback. The narrator is speaking from somewhere beyond death, recounting that experience. She starts with the fly but then flashes back a bit earlier. Before the fly made its unwanted appearance, there was a stereotypical deathbed scene. The air was still, something ike the calm at the center of a hurricane (fittingly called the eye of the storm). The gathered family and friends have run out of tears and begin readying themselves for the final throes of death – the moment when King Jesus is to carry the soul away to its heavenly abode.

        In her final moments the dying person lucidly makes her final will and testament. All is ready. The next line is one of Dickinson's greats, written in the passive voice as if someone were musing wonderingly at an odd thing. "and then it was / There interposed a Fly". Now we are back in time to when the poem started. The narrative is impelled with two more "and then"s as sight is lost, signifying death.

The incongruity of the poem is, I think, meant to deflate death, to bring it into the realm of daily life. To us death is anticipated as momentous. To the cosmos, or the household biota, perhaps not so much. It would consequently be a mistake to expect some grand, transcendental experience to be carried off without a hitch (which may be why Huxley tried to stack the deck with LSD). For some

In an earlier poem, Dickinson claimed that agony was appropriate on the deathbed ("I like a look of Agony" [F339]). The agony is akin to birth pains as the soul transitions; it is also cathartic for the observers.

        In "A throe upon the features" [F105], Dickinson sketches death as first "A throe", then "A hurry in the breath" and finally "An ecstasy of parting". That is the tragedy of the fly: it kills the ecstasy.

Dickinson's language in this popular poem is in stark contrast to the antics of the fly. She peppers the poem with formal and legalistic terms: the King is to "Be witnessed"; she wills her Keepsakes and signs away "What portion of me be / Assignable" (a rather droll way of categorizing material possessions); even the fly is "interposed" between the light and the poet. The disparity between the language of the deathbed scene and the actions of the antic fly adds to the irony.

        That light is no doubt metaphorical as well as descriptive. Within the light should be some vision, some epiphany; even God. What does it mean when a fly blocks that light? I don't think Dickinson meant it as some divine cruelty. It is not the "June Bee" that disappears into the "mocking sky" after tantalizing us with heaven. Nor do I think it is some degraded image of Jesus. It is, at most, a sign of cosmic indifference to the ultimate moment of life. Rather than a demon battling for possession of a precious soul, there is the same nagging, mundane, buzzing annoyance that plagues one throughout the whole of life.