Forever – is composed of Nows –

Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –

From this – experienced Here –
Remove the Dates – to These –
Let Months dissolve in further Months –
And Years – exhale in Years –

Without Debate – or Pause –
Or Celebrated Days –
No different Our Years would be
From Anno Dominies –


F690, J624, Fascicle 32, 1863



I love it any time Emily Dickinson takes on “eternity” as a subject. I find her spin on it dizzingly powerful. That first line is a good example. It simultaneously zooms out to Forever and zooms in to Now, and by conflating the two shows us both that there can be nothing more than the moment, and, conversely, that the moment is worth extra consideration because it is our actions in the moment that “compose” forever. That verb "compose" brings to mind writing...or music. 

The second line is a good example too. “Tis no different time” is a sliding modifier. When taken after the first line it modifies "now". It says: there is no different time than now. BUT it could ALSO modify the “infiniteness” of the third line. Taken that way it says: there is no other time than infiniteness. That sliding clause further conflates now with forever. In this nifty way the poet weaves the concepts together. There is no other time than now, and there is no other time than the infinite. See? It's dizzying.

Lines 3 and 4 move over to the realm of space instead of time. Just like you have now and forever in the realm of time, you have home and infinity in the realm of space. Forever:now::Infinity:home. It’s almost as if she is intuitively anticipating the "Space-time" of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. (Math nerd alert! I imagine she and her sister-in-law Sue, a mathematician, had some mind-bending conversations about infinity.)

The choice to use the word infiniteness instead of the usual noun, infinity, seems fitting, as the “ness” gives the word "infinite" a quality of spaciousness.

“Latitude of home” would be a paradox in the realm of infinity, because how can you have any latitude in an infinity? You can only have a "latitude" in the same way we can have a “now”, from the vantage point of your own seat of perception. We can only measure where we are by where we commonly (and individually) perceive ourselves to be. What the word “latitude” seems to point to, here, is your internal home.

Latitude has a second definition which bolsters this idea. Latitude can mean “scope for freedom of action or thought” So I think home here could also be the place where you are free to think in the way you want to. And perhaps that is what it means to find your way home internally. Dickinson never ceases to amaze me with her word choices.

The next line of the poem, the beginning of stanza 2, is yet another sliding modifier. (There are at least 3 in this poem). The line, "From this – experienced Here –", can either qualify the line above it or below. When I tried toggling back and forth between the two, above and below, the line began to hover, suspended between the past and the future:

And Latitude of Home –

From this – experienced Here –

Remove the Dates – to These –

See how it just floats there in the middle? After going back and forth the mind settles down on that capitalized "Here". It would be a terrific mantra, wouldn't it? 

Lines 7 & 8 are so relaxing. Let months dissolve into months and years exhale in years. The language here is the language of letting go. Exhale and dissolve. You let go of time here and just flow. 

Can you argue with letting go? You could try. But the 3rd stanza anticipates your argument and answers it flat out with: "No debate." Then it goes further, "No debate...or pause." Why is there no debate? Because there is no pause. You can't pause time. It's going. No debate, so you might as well go with it.

There are three negations in a row in the first two lines of the third stanza and they are all making different, but interrelated points. There's a very condensed logic packed into this stanza.  There is no debate, no pause, and no celebrated days. Notice that these two lines are a third sliding modifier in this poem. They can either qualify the lines above them or below them. 

The last negation, "no celebrated days" is a very Buddhist thought. If every moment makes up forever, then either we celebrate every moment or none. It's Christmas every day is what I think Dickinson slyly implies when she writes  "No different Our Years would be/ From Anno Dominies"* 

Though I had never read this poem before, I did know the first line, which pops up as a quote here and there. I start my HS classes out with a 3 breath meditation and sometimes I'll say this line during the meditation. "Take a slow deep breath in. Stay with the breath in the present. Remember that Forever is composed of Nows." Next time I'll add, "Exhale and dissolve." 

_-/)dam Wade l)eGraff

*Anno Domini (A.D.) implicitly refers to Christ's birth, so the use of the plural here, "Anno Dominies" may be implying that Christ is born anew every year. There is a fascinating theological idea in Dickinson's poetry of Christ being born and crucified continually, in each of us. Cf. F372 "The stiff Heart questions 'was it He that bore (the cross) and 'Yesterday, or Centuries before?" And in F670, Dickinson writes that there is only one Crucifixion recorded, but there are as many as there are persons.)