After great pain, a formal feeling comes
Emily Dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
The stiff heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round -
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone -
This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -
Like Poe before her, Dickinson could imagine death from the inside and from the far side. Her subject was that of the oldest scriptures, but her idiom included such state-of-the-art locutions as "Nerves" and "mechanical."