Two swimmers wrestled on the spar
Until the morning sun,
When one turned smiling to the land.
O God, the other one!The stray ships passing spied a face Upon the waters borne,
~Emily Dickinson
With eyes in death still begging raised,
And hands beseeching thrown.
Maybe I’ve been watching too much BBC lately, but this sounds like a murder to me. I haven’t found any reference to this yet, but the image of the swimmers wrestling on the spar, with one succeeding and surviving, the other drowning, is suggestive.
It’s also curious the way the speaker inserts herself as observer. The broken exclamation, “O God, the other one!” sounds as if she is somehow watching the drama unfold, if only in her very vivid imagination.
The poem also reads like a riddle. Who or what do the two swimmers represent? What do you think?
The Emily Project 