I sing to use the Waiting

I sing to use the Waiting
My Bonnet but to tie
And shut the Door unto my House
No more to do have I

Till His best step approaching
We journey to the Day
And tell each other how We sang
To Keep the Dark away.


       -F955, J850, sheet 20, 1865


The poet is tying her bonnet, shutting the door to her house and preparing for a Journey to “the Day.” If night equates to death in poetry parlance, then "the Day" would be the next life, perhaps Heaven. The phrase “No more to do have I” leads one to think that life is all but over and done for the singer of this poem.

 
The first line, “I sing to use the Waiting” is poignant if you equate singing with poetry itself. Dickinson writes poetry to “use the Waiting.” An entire life is reduced to waiting, yet the waiting itself becomes a way of living.

If you pair the first line with the last, “We sang/ to Keep the Dark away,” you begin to approach Dickinson’s poetics. The latter lines remind me of the letter Dickinson wrote to Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1862, “I had a terror — since September — I could tell to none — and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground — because I am afraid.” One sings, one writes poetry, to align the self with the transcendence of music and beauty. It is a kind of incantation warding off fear.

 We are left with the puzzle of what is meant by the "We" of this poem, what is meant by “His best step approaching." If Dickinson is talking about meeting someone at Death, one might at first imagine she is referring to Christ, but the poem implies a shared history which complicates this reading. Both the poet and “He” have something to say in the end to each other about singing to keep the dark away. That doesn’t necessarily exclude Christ from the picture, but it’s a stretch to imagine Christ singing to keep the dark away and then telling the poet about it on the way to "Day." So what's going on?

It is tempting to posit a lover for the "He" of this poem; Wadsworth, or Sue, or whom have you. This is intriguing because it begs the question of why and how this meeting might happen before the poet journeys to Day. But I think this might be a too literal interpretation. After all, we can't know the answer to this question with any surety. Though I'm fascinated by Dickinson's private life, I prefer to read these poems as open to the reader as much as possible, and therefore read the "He" in this poem as the reader. This poem, for me, is about how we all meet, finally, in the profound shared space of our vulnerability. We all deal, at some level, with a fear of the dark and in poetry we may meet and walk hand in hand into the great beyond.

The “best step approaching” the poet, then, is our own. “Best” is on us. Put your best foot forward. A "foot," in a Dickinson poem, is always, as far as I can tell, code for a metrical foot. Therefore "step" may be read as a metonym for poetry itself. Put your best song forward. 

This reading gives us some insight into the shut door in this poem, which suggests a withdrawal from ordinary social life into a private world of the writer. The tied bonnet is the tying up of the poems themselves. The poem becomes an image of the poet alone in her room, transforming isolation into art.

The last lines open that solitary world to the reader:

And tell each other how We sang
To Keep the Dark away.

          -/)dam Wade l)eGraff

P.S. This poem reminds me of the lines near the end of Whitman's Song of Myself. It's almost as if Emily and Walt are talking to each other through the poetry . 

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

P.P.S. Speaking of houses, The New York Times just published this terrific interactive commentary by A.O Scott on F466, "I dwell in possibility. Check it out.