hay – The Emily Project

I WONDER if the sepulchre
Is not a lonesome way,
When men and boys, and larks and June
Go down the fields to hay!
Emily Dickinson

I love a poem that can be read two ways. This one is no exception. It looks simple, at first: probably the speaker is wondering if the sepulchre, or grave, is lonesome when it’s June and all of the men are going into the fields to make hay, and the birds, I suppose, are following them.

But what if the speaker is arguing the opposite? What if, as she says, the sepulchre “is not a lonesome way” (emphasis mine) when this haying is happening?

Presumably, the sepulchre is not in the hay fields. So who, then, is visiting the grave when the men are working?

Well, one presumes, the women. While the men are cutting the grass, and thereby making hay from the fallen strands, maybe the women are visiting the dead. So the two are dealing with death in different ways: the men are hastening it to make hay; the women are visiting it.

What do you think? Is the sepulchre lonely or not?

THE grass so little has to do,–
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,
And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;
And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine,–
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.
And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.
And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away,–
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were a hay!
Emily Dickinson

I keep expecting these things to be unrelatable, given the hundred and fiftyish years between us and our poet, and the poems keep on scratching right at my particular itch for the day. Perhaps that’s why Dickinson has remained relevant so long: we can continue to read ourselves, easily, into her poems.

I can imagine the speaker now, looking at the grass after a long, hard day, and thinking, ‘You know, it must be great to just have to be a blade of grass.’ I’ve had that kind of day. The one that starts with a raging thunderstorm as you’re driving to work, and continues with forgetting the textbook for your 8 am class, and crescendoes to the part where you have 20 or so research paper rough drafts to critique and not enough hours in the day. Oh, and remember when you promised to build a fort with your daughter and play pirates? Good, because she hasn’t forgotten. Find somewhere to fit that in between dance practice, dinner, and breathing.

I’m not quite ready to be a hay just yet, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Tag: hay

XLII: I WONDER if the sepulchre

The Grass