I measure every grief I meet
~Emily Dickinson
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long, 5
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try, 10
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse 15
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love. 20
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.
There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,—
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me 30
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume 35
That some are like my own.
My first thought is that this is an uncharacteristically long Dickinson poem. That makes sense, given the subject matter. This is Dickinson’s jam, this dwelling on pain.
My next thought is that this whole poem is basically riffing on the old saw that “misery loves company.” That’s not it exactly, of course, but I think the poem and the platitude are touching on the same general human tendency. When we’re suffering, it’s a perverse kind of comfort to know that others are, too, and to wonder about the precise nature of their pain.
I am writing this on Day 3 of a particularly nasty head cold. Also Day 3 of my back going out. Also Day 3 since the realization that I am way out of shape and I need to get myself in gear unless I want to continue throwing out my back. Good times. In the vast scheme of things, these are very small sorrows. But they are mine, dammit, and they are eating my brain at the moment.
Dickinson’s poem is a reminder that we don’t suffer alone–well, that we do, but that we are never the only ones suffering. What saddens me about this poem, though, is the sense I get from it that we will never truly understand one another’s griefs, no matter how much we may try.
This is one of those poems that makes me want to go out and defy it. While the speaker doesn’t seem to ever succeed in understanding the sufferings of those around her, it also seems that she’s relying on observation alone–she keeps wondering, guessing–but never once is there a suggestion that she sits down with anybody else and just listens.
So I think, today, in the midst of my own small griefs, that that’s this poem’s lesson for me. Maybe we can’t ever really understand each other–but we’re certainly not going to get there without trying.
The Emily Project 