Emily Dickinson

by WINFIELD TOWNLEY SCOTT

WHAT is rejected becomes a greater thing.
All things referred draw drama from its size.
So Amherst can become the fabulous sun,
One yard a kingdom and one house a castle,
One room a throne, and dry within that room
One closet be the casket of a name.

Call Emily. And fetch a mischievous dance
Of petals and butterflies and bees turned stars
Turned fireflies between the hedge and window
Where the girl in the white dress glimmers and goes.
Off stage, the larger terror than we want
Save in the larger eyes of those returned.

But there’s a dance — a ballet of Emily:
A thousand of her in pirouetting white
Like great revolving daisies all the way
From her father’s door over into the graveyard —
A gay haunting in the middle of town.
Then as in a movie this dissolves.

Speak to the stone and to the grass and to the door:
Where is Emily? The Sabbath noon
Is still and empty, or is only still,
Or is not even quite exactly still.
By such singleness is singularity
Made multiple, and Emily everywhere.

She knows now the necessity to deny
The Father, Son, but never the Holy Ghost.
She weds the Holy Ghost and it is death
A going down under the garden-beds
And then a resurrection as if alone;
The mountain of darkness taken into her.

Only through denial great acceptance
As only in depths of silence the tall song:
She walks here as immortal as the light
Made indistinguishable from the air,
Having the self-possession of the sun.
So Emily is Emily is Emily forever.