Before He comes we weigh the Time!
'Tis Heavy and 'tis Light.
When He depart, an Emptiness
Is the prevailing Freight.
-F949, J834, sheet 19, 1865
The heaviness of emptiness. Or, like Dylan sings, “Sometimes, the silence sounds like thunder.” Or, like Milan Kundera’s great title puts it, “The unbearable lightness of being.”
Before He comes we weigh the Time!
What does “He” represent in this poem? A lover? God? For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say “Love.” Without Love…
'Tis Heavy and 'tis Light.
This poem, itself, is both heavy and light. It has a heavy subject matter but is short and light. ‘Tis weighty, but sleight. It makes for a jarring contrast, like a jaunty pop song that expresses the deepest longing.
When He depart, an Emptiness
Is the prevailing Freight.
The poem shows the twin sides of anticipation for arrival and grief of departure. They are, in a sense, one in the same.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
The heaviness of emptiness. Or, like Dylan sings, “Sometimes, the silence sounds like thunder.” Or, like Milan Kundera’s great title puts it, “The unbearable lightness of being.”
Before He comes we weigh the Time!
What does “He” represent in this poem? A lover? God? For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say “Love.” Without Love…
'Tis Heavy and 'tis Light.
This poem, itself, is both heavy and light. It has a heavy subject matter but is short and light. ‘Tis weighty, but sleight. It makes for a jarring contrast, like a jaunty pop song that expresses the deepest longing.
When He depart, an Emptiness
Is the prevailing Freight.
The poem shows the twin sides of anticipation for arrival and grief of departure. They are, in a sense, one in the same.
-/)dam Wade l)eGraff
P.S. Occasionally I will pick up an anthology of poetry called The Rattle Bag (edited byTed Hughes and Seamus Heaney) and read a random poem from it. Just after writing this post I seredipitously opened it to the following poem,
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight.
It's a much later Dickinson poem which I hadn't seen before, but I was struck right away by the similarity to, and difference from, the poem at hand. It's fascinating the way Dickinson comes back over and over again to the same words and ideas, but with new shades of meaning. The mortal lip divine.
I'm reminded of the final stanza of "There's a certain Slant of light,"
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes, the Landscape listens—
Shadows—hold their breath—
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –
By the way, Fr320 was the first Dickinson poem that I ever came across. It was commented on in a paper by my favorite author, Thomas Ogden. After reading that paper, I bought "The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson." And then I discovered this great blog and ended up reading it entirely, from the very first post to the present one.
From Thomas Ogden here via you. Thank you for letting us know that. Who are you? (Other than Nobody of course). Where do you live?
ReplyDeleteThe connection to "slant of light" is terrific; in both poems there is the sense that anticipation and grief are equal but opposite twins.
ReplyDelete"When it comes, the Landscape listens— /shadows — hold their breath" is breathtaking.