MINE enemy is growing old,—
I have at last revenge.
The palate of the hate departs;
If any would avenge,—~Emily Dickinson
Let him be quick, the viand flits,
It is a faded meat.
Anger as soon as fed is dead;
’T is starving makes it fat.
Sometimes Emily is weird and obscure, and sometimes she is crystal-clear and spot-on. This is one of those latter times. There’s nothing vague here, nothing coy or perplexing, and the sustained metaphor of revenge as meat is vivid and visceral. It calls to mind the proverb “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” while flipping it on its head. According to Dickinson, revenge is inherently cold–by the time you get it, it is already faded.
It’s interesting that she begins with her enemy growing old–the way she’s set up the poem suggests that it is simply the fact of her enemy’s age/mortality that gives her revenge. But the speaker as well as the reader know full well that someone else’s aging isn’t revenge–it’s simply part of the natural order of things. If the object of the speaker’s anger is aging, then so is the speaker herself. And with that aging, “The palate of the hate departs.”
You could read this poem as the speaker advocating speedy revenge–“Let him be quick, the viand flits”–but that’s not really what Dickinson is getting at. As soon as we feed our anger it is dead. We feed it by starving it, by not seeking resolution.
The Emily Project 