When everything that ticked has stopped

Running rest-day ...

... incredibly busy at work just now, and certainly have a bit of training to catch-up on!

Meantime, here's another Emily Dickinson poem - just to prove she does 'despair and melancholy', as impressively as 'love' :-(


It was not death, for I stood up

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And I was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.

---

Such brooding, melancholic language ... hopelessness, despair and depression: all so clearly encapsulated in one short poem.

She was - quite simply, for me - a genius of the English-language.