To Emily Dickinson
Dear Emily, my tears would burn your page,
But for the fire-dry line that makes them burn—
Burning my eyes, my fingers, while I turn
Singly the words that crease my heart with age.
If I could make some tortured pilgrimage
Through words or Time. or the blank pain of Doom
And kneel before you as you found your tomb,
Then I might rise to face my heritage.
Yours was an empty upland solitude
Bleached to the powder of a dying name;
The mind, lost in a word’s lost certitude
That faded as the fading footsteps came
To trace an epilogue to words grown odd
In that hard argument which led to God.
poem by Yvor Winters
Added by Poetry Lover
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