“I cannot live with You” (poem 640 in Thomas Johnson’s edition of the Complete Poems) is Dickinson’s longest mature lyric, addressed to a recognizably human, hopelessly loved other, and employing the structure and rhetoric of a persuasive argument. Here it is.
Audio: Hear these poets read “I cannot live with You”
Lucie Brock-Broido (2:45)
Steven Cramer (2:05)
Mary Jo Salter (1:49)
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I cannot live with You—
It would be Life—
And Life is over there—
Behind the Shelf
The Sexton keeps the Key to—
Putting up
Our Life—His Porcelain—
Like a Cup—
Discarded of the Housewife—
Quaint—or Broke—
A newer Sevres pleases—
Old Ones crack—
I could not die—with You—
For One must wait
To shut the Other’s Gaze down—
You—could not—
And I—Could I stand by
And see You—freeze—
Without my Right of Frost—
Death’s privilege?
Nor could I rise—with You—
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus’—
That New Grace
Glow plain—and foreign
On my homesick Eye—
Except that You than He
Shone closer by—
They’d judge Us—How—
For You—served Heaven—You know,
Or sought to—
I could not—
Because You saturated Sight—
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise
And were You lost, I would be—
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame—
And were You—saved —
And I—condemned to be
Where You were not—
That self—were Hell to Me—
So We must meet apart—
You there—I—here—
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are—and Prayer—
And that White Sustenance—
Despair—
Although it is one of Dickinson’s more “spoken” poems, “I cannot live with You” still confronts the performer with a number of characteristic challenges. Consider the first sentence—or rather, what the poem's first sentence may or may not entail. Arguably, it encompasses the entirety of the first three stanzas. Punctuated conventionally, with elided logical connectives interpolated, its prose sense might read as follows: “I cannot live with you [because] it would be life, and life is over there, behind the shelf the sexton keeps the key to, putting up our life, [which is] his porcelain, like a cup discarded of the housewife—quaint or broke—a newer Sevres pleases, [after] old ones crack.” Those very elisions are, of course, crucial to the poem’s stark authority of tone, but they also create a sentence very difficult to parse, to understand, and thus to speak aloud with confidence. My paraphrase places “His Porcelain” in apposition to “Our Life,” but it could represent the start of a participial phrase introducing a new detail (“his porcelain like a cup”). Notice also how “Quaint — or Broke” interrupts what we may take as a noun clause (“the housewife ... a newer Sevres pleases”), and thus wryly modifies both wife and cup—the former by proximity, the latter by common sense. Yet an equally plausible reading supplies a full stop after “broke,” understands “pleases” as an intransitive verb, and regards “a newer Sevres pleases” as a remark on the general aesthetic pleasure afforded by a new set of French porcelain.