सगरमाथा (Sagarmatha)

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I CAN wade grief,
Whole pools of it,—
I ’m used to that.
But the least push of joy
Breaks up my feet, 5
And I tip—drunken.
Let no pebble smile,
’T was the new liquor,—
That was all!

Power is only pain, 10
Stranded, through discipline,
Till weights will hang.
Give balm to giants,
And they ’ll wilt, like men.
Give Himmaleh,— 15
They ’ll carry him!

~Emily Dickinson
Mount Everest image via Pixabay.

Today’s post is going to be a footnote of sorts. I love this poem, and there are all kinds of things to say about it, but I think it also speaks for itself, so I’m going to have fun getting into the weeds a bit instead.

I fell down a rabbit-hole with this one. First I had to Google “Himmaleh.” Turns out it’s Himalaya, but closer to the Sanskrit word. This word is actually two words combined, and they mean “winter house,” which is completely lovely. The Himalayas could very well be winter’s home base.

Then, of course, I had to look up the true name of Mount Everest. It annoys me when people rename places that don’t belong to them, and “Mount Everest” is a prime example. It is decidedly not a “Mount Everest.” Its name is Sagarmatha, which means “Peak of Heaven” and is a vastly preferable and more evocative name.

I think about this kind of thing often–how we call places by the names some white explorer gave them, and not by their true names. I’ve often wondered why we can’t just call countries what the people living in them call them. What is it, this need to rename things in our own image? Does it make them more understandable? More accessible? More easy to fit in a box? Why is Deutschland “Allemagne” in French and “Germany” in English?

Why can’t we just call things by their names? I like that in this poem, Dickinson uses “Himmaleh.”

Frog publicity

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I ’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

~Emily Dickinson

I love this poem. I’ve known this one for years–it’s one that frequently gets anthologized in middle school English textbooks. I’ve always found it charming and quirky. “How public, like a frog” I find particularly amusing.

As with all good poems, the meanings and nuances of this one have deepened and grown richer for me over years. Reading this as a middle schooler, I was convinced it was about the joy of finding the other weirdos. I still think it is, and now I see more in it, too. As an adult, I read this poem as deeply counter-cultural.

Dickinson wasn’t writing in an age of social media, but this poem seems prescient. When I read it as an adult, I can’t help but think of all the people I know of who broadcast their every life event over the interwebs. From the rare and wondrous, like the birth of a child, to the mundane, like hanging out in a backyard with the people you always hang out with, so many people put so much on social media in the search to “be somebody.”

I feel like a curmudgeon. I don’t post pictures of my children because I feel strongly that they ought to have the same opportunities I’ve had to control their own social media presences. I can’t help but feel a little FOMO when other people are posting pictures of their beautiful kiddos and everyone is exclaiming over them. But in the end, the frog-publicity just doesn’t feel right for me and my children.

Maybe I’m a holdout. Maybe I’m on the wrong end of history here. But I know my children, and I want to respect what they want. I want them to be able to say, “What’s out there for public consumption is something I control.” In an age when it feels that our autonomy is subsumed by systems and even a waiver for a kid to go play at a gym includes a clause stating that the company gets to use their image for promotional purposes from now until forever, I want my kids to feel that they have some say. I want them to understand the value of privacy.

So I’m still one of the weirdos. There’s always the temptation to be public like a frog, to win the admiration of the bog–but in the end, that’s all it is–bog admiration. You can get bogged down in it. You can forget what’s important. You can lose yourself.

I would rather be one of the weirdos.

An overcoat of clay

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DEATH is a dialogue between
The spirit and the dust.
“Dissolve,” says Death. The Spirit, “Sir,
I have another trust.”

Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
The Spirit turns away,
Just laying off, for evidence,
An overcoat of clay.

~Emily Dickinson

As the death-poems go, this one is pretty hopeful. The notion of death as a dialogue is an evocative one, though the metaphor quickly gets mixed in the third line. In the first two lines, death is the dialogue between spirit and flesh. In the third line, however, Death is a participant in the dialogue, and is talking with the Spirit. There is an implicit equation between Death and dust, death and body, as opposed to Spirit.

The dialogue begins with an imperious command from Death to the Spirit to “Dissolve,” and the dialogue quickly becomes an argument. The Spirit refuses the order, Death doubts this, and argues “from the ground,” implying that Death now inhabits the “dust” of flesh and that Spirit is already ascending to “another trust.”

The Spirit refuses to be drawn into the argument. Death is arrogant and bossy, but the Spirit finds expression in actions rather than words. It turns away, and lays off the trappings of the flesh.

It’s a very Puritan reading, this notion of the body as dust. It’s the reading many of us have been taught to accept—that flesh is somehow other than us, that our bodies are just shells for our souls. The body in this poem feels superfluous—while we’re told initially that Death is a conversation between flesh and soul, we quickly learn that the body here is silent—it’s Death and the Spirit that get to speak. The physical is almost extraneous, not really a part of the deceased, but merely “An overcoat of clay.”

Seeking Neptune

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SHE went as quiet as the dew
From a familiar flower.
Not like the dew did she return
At the accustomed hour!

She dropt as softly as a star 5
From out my summer’s eve;
Less skillful than Leverrier
It’s sorer to believe!

~Emily Dickinson
Neptune, via Pixabay.com

Okay, so I fell down a rabbit hole with this one. Obviously we’re talking about someone who’s dead and missed, but I had no idea who Leverrier was. Turns out, he’s the French astronomer who predicted the existence and location of Neptune via its effects on Uranus. His area of expertise was “celestial mechanics,” which is a phrase so rife with possibility it’s going to haunt me for a long time.

This Leverrier reference deepens my whole understanding of this poem. In the first stanza, the departed one is described in earthly terms, as something small and ephemeral and unremarkable–she was “quiet” and “like the dew” “from a familiar flower.” Even the hour is “accustomed.” The scale of this stanza is small and expected.

It’s in the second stanza that we really see the importance of this unnamed woman and the effect of her absence on the speaker. She dropped “as softly as a star”–though still quiet, she is now described in not earthly but celestial terms, and has gone from the scale of a dewdrop to a sun.

I think the speaker is comparing herself to Leverrier here, despite the lack of any kind of subject for this clause. She is less skillful that the astronomer who could predict something unseen by the way it affects something known, but her predicament is more dire. The missing loved one, like the unseen Neptune, will forever shift the speaker’s world in its orbit.

Certain

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I NEVER saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God, 5
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

~Emily Dickinson

Dickinson is wonderfully confounding. Sometimes I can’t for the life of me figure out what she’s talking about. Other times, it’s crystal clear. This is one of those clear ones. The diction and syntax are simple, almost childlike. This is a poem a young child could understand, and that fits with her theme of faith.

In this poem, the certainty of rhythm, rhyme, and syntax mirrors the certainty of the speaker. Hers is a childlike faith, which the Bible upholds as the exemplar for everyone. It’s a simple poem, but also masterful in its simplicity.

Time trembles

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LOOK back on time with kindly eyes,
He doubtless did his best;
How softly sinks his trembling sun
In human nature’s west!

~Emily Dickinson

Years ago, I worked as a professional organizer and time management consultant. As a fledgling organizer, I read books, took online courses, and absorbed as much as I could about the ways in which we use space and time, and how to make better use of them. This poem is recalling those experiences and that knowledge for me now, because it is a plea to humans to change their perspective of time, which is much of what time management consulting is about.

The fact that the speaker needs to begin this way–even needs to write this poem at all–says something about human nature. We tend not to “look back on time with kindly eyes.” We blame time for our own shortcomings–there wasn’t enough time, I didn’t have enough time, it took too much time, who has time for that? Time, rather than our own failure to use it wisely, takes the blame. I think a huge part of that is our own Western view of time as linear, as opposed to other ways of understanding time as a circle or spiral that loops back on itself.

Whenever we don’t have enough time, it’s not time itself that’s to blame. It’s our use of time–but it’s so much easier to just say, It’s not my fault, I didn’t get enough time.

The line about the “trembling sun” is especially evocative of our attitudes towards time. Why is the sun “trembling”–is it because we’ve exhausted time? because time has learned to fear us? a little of both? Either way, it doesn’t sound positive. With our attitudes toward and use of time, we make time itself tremble.

Sunrise // Sunset

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I ’LL tell you how the sun rose,—
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets, 5
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”

But how he set, I know not.
There seemed a purple stile 10
Which little yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,
A dominie in gray
Put gently up the evening bars, 15
And led the flock away.

~Emily Dickinson

I’ve read this one many, many times. I like it–it’s a vivid and accurate description of sunrise and sunset. I’ve struggled with what exactly to say about it, since it’s so well-known and seems so straightforward.

Every reading of a poem opens up new possibilities for understanding, and as I sit at my desk in the lean dark hour before sunrise, it occurs to me for the first time that there is an air of the mysterious pervading this seemingly straightforward poem.

Though the speaker begins by declaring that she’ll tell us how the sun rose, her soft exclamation at the end of the second stanza undermines this confidence. She says “That must have been the sun!” as if she’s not entirely sure.

Then, in the next line, she tells us that she doesn’t know how the sun set. She proceeds to tell us exactly how it set. There’s a rich contradiction running through this poem. Does she or doesn’t she know what she’s seeing? In the case of both sunrise and sunset, she tells us that she doesn’t know, but shows us that she does.

What to do with this? Is she just being coy? Or is she saying something here about the human understanding of nature, about our perceptions of reality?

Maybe she’s saying something about the role of the poet, about the power of poetry. She begins by declaring she’ll tell us something, then backpedals to qualify it. She then tells us what she doesn’t know, and proceeds to describe it. Maybe this isn’t a poem about sunrise and sunset–maybe it’s a poem about the power of language to engage the world, to make sense of it, to connect us with the larger universe.

Definitely not my favorite

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SO bashful when I spied her,
So pretty, so ashamed!
So hidden in her leaflets,
Lest anybody find;

So breathless till I passed her, 5
So helpless when I turned
And bore her, struggling, blushing,
Her simple haunts beyond!

For whom I robbed the dingle,
For whom betrayed the dell, 10
Many will doubtless ask me,
But I shall never tell!

~Emily Dickinson

I’ve been sitting here staring at this poem, trying to think of something nice to say about it, but it’s the end of a long day and I am all up in my feelings about consent. So I’m going to heed one of my mom’s favorite old sayings: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Immortal copy

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BELSHAZZAR had a letter,—
He never had but one;
Belshazzar’s correspondent
Concluded and begun

In that immortal copy 5
The conscience of us all
Can read without its glasses
On revelation’s wall.

~Emily Dickinson

I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to say about this one. Ironically–or fittingly?–the internet keeps cutting out here. My words are liable to be sparse and cryptic.

Belshazzar’s “letter,” in the Bible, is the source of the phrase, “the writing on the wall.” Mysterious writing appears on a wall during the king’s feast, and the prophet Daniel interprets it as a sign of doom should the king not do as his predecessor did and turn to God. Belshazzar rewards Daniel but apparently does nothing else, and that night dies, losing control of his kingdom to outside forces.

I’ve avoided this poem for a long time because I didn’t know quite what to make of it, but I think maybe I’ve been overthinking it. Belshazzar received word that he needed to change. We all get these messages, loud and clear, whether from invisible divine hands or other more prosaic sources. They’re glaringly obvious, to our consciences, at least. What we do with them is up to us.

Belshazzar’s Feast, Rembrandt, via Wikipedia.

Darkest before dawn

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WHEN night is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It ’s time to smooth the hair

And get the dimples ready, 5
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.

~Emily Dickinson

The morning sky is tinged deep blue. Dawn hasn’t yet breached the eastern horizon. The balance is just beginning to tilt toward autumn. Days are shortening. It seems to happen so quickly–a month ago, wouldn’t the sun have risen by now?

I find myself growing impatient for the sunrise. Suddenly, somehow, we are already in that part of the year when sunlight begins to seem precious, a resource not to be wasted for a second. Though the fall equinox is still weeks away, autumn hovers on every shaft of golden afternoon light, plays in the golding leaves of the walnuts and the brown-crinkled edges of the oaks. The fawns who were born in the woods this spring are losing their sun-dapple spots–they won’t need them when the leaves have fled and the sun is scarcer.

Soon the sun will rise and night will slip away into the busy forgetfulness of day. Soon the heat of summer will be a memory only.