I say is, and not was, for as I read her words upon the page, her beauty comes alive to me evermore. I am not really in the habit of reading so much these days, but as I have been up since 4 am, I somehow found myself eager to glance upon my old writing, specifically my papers from college, 10 years ago, and was pleasantly surprised by the beauty I found in the writing of the glorious women I included in an anthology I compiled, entitled "Transcendence of the Spirit: Flight & Liberation". Adrienne Rich's brilliant and complex images and evermore dazzling logics, Nikki Giovanni's tremendously incisive metaphors matched only by her keen interventions on a painfully static social order, and of course Emily's beautiful voice, painting great intellectual expanses upon which we may wander in delight. And to do her a little tribute, it is my great pleasure to share with you one of her poems, called "Two Butterflies go out at Noon".
Two butterflies went out at noon
And waltzed above a stream,
Then stepped straight through the firmament
And rested on a beam;
And then together bore away
Upon a shining sea,--
Though never yet, in any port
Their coming mentioned be.
If spoken by the distant bird,
If met in ether sea
By frigate or by merchantman,
Report was not to me.
Such a little poem, but so semantically voluminous. I am in awe of Madame Dickinson, and the oceans of beauty tucked under her alabaster breast.
No comments:
Post a Comment