In my second year of BA study in College, I had a paper titled “American English,” and Emily Dickinson appeared as a small but tight collection of poems. The four carefully selected poems prescribed by the syllabus and my general curiosity to read up other works.
We read her for exams, for paraphrase, for themes to be identified and explained. Death was metaphor. Hope was imagery. Faith was an idea to be discussed.
Years later, I returned to the same poems—not as a student, but as someone who had lived. Dickinson had not changed. I had.
Hope: From the Hands to the Soul
The first poem I encountered was “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
When I read it then, I could almost feel the bird in my hands—gently fluttering, almost alive. Hope felt small and tender, something I could cup carefully.
Now, the bird no longer fits in my palms. It flutters somewhere deeper, in the heart of the soul, larger than my younger self could hold. What startled me this time was the line “And sings the tune without the words.” Hope does not explain itself. It does not justify its presence. It simply persists.
Dickinson’s storms—the gale, the violent wind—felt beautifully rendered even then. But this time I paused at “That kept so many warm —” and lingered. In the midst of cold winds and wet storms, warmth still exists. That warmth is not the bird’s reward; it is what the bird gives. Humans are warmed by hope, even when hope asks nothing in return.
The final lines stayed with me longer now. “Yet, never, in Extremity, / It asked a crumb — of Me.” Hope does not bargain—not even when the soul is most desperate. I understand that now.
Death: From Concept to Presence
“Because I could not stop for Death —” was once my favourite poem. As a student, I thought about death often, but from a safe distance. The carriage, the civility, the slow journey—all of it felt poetic, intellectual, contained.
Life collapsed that distance.
After a life-threatening experience early in my marriage, even the questions that once protected me were stripped away. Death ceased to be metaphor and became presence. Reading the poem now, I feel the cold draft. I feel the thinness of the clothing. And yet, there is relief. A warmth rises in the chest. A sigh escapes.
Dickinson’s Death does not terrify. He does not rush. He carries rather than drags. The carriage moves slowly, until it reaches what the poem calls home. I no longer read this as invitation, nor as surrender. I read it as reassurance—that even at the edge, there is dignity.
Consciousness at the Threshold: The Fly
I did not remember reading “I heard a Fly buzz — when I died —” before. Perhaps I was not ready then. Even now, I approached it cautiously.
What struck me first was the persistence of consciousness—the ability to hear a fly buzz while storms rage elsewhere. The room is sealed, suspended, like the eye of a storm. The mourners’ eyes are dry now; grief has spent itself. Their breathing is uniform and steady—unlike the speaker’s, which has ceased.
When the poem speaks of signing away keepsakes, I sensed the moral neatness of it: possessions written off, responsibilities reassigned. Order restored. And then—the fly.
The fly cannot be assigned. It does not belong to ritual or closure. It is a remainder. Something unresolved. The speaker feels the need to do something about it—and cannot.
In the final lines, the blue, uncertain buzz stands between the light and the speaker. I read the blue as the cooling after the spirit’s warmth has withdrawn, the uncertainty as a final stumble—not of fear, but of jurisdiction. The habits of living no longer apply. And then sight itself fails. Not violently. Gently. Meaning dissolves.
Heavenly Hurt: Living With Awareness
“There’s a certain Slant of light” felt like a continuation—but from life itself. As though Dickinson moves freely between mortality and living, carrying clarity across states.
This is not a cozy chapel. It is a cathedral—vast, echoing, grand. The light oppresses. The tunes have heft. They do not console. They weigh.
When Dickinson names this feeling “Heavenly Hurt,” I understood it as the pain that arises not from disbelief, but from belief taken seriously. Religion promises arrival if rules are followed. The hurt lies in knowing—quietly, inwardly—that we have not followed them fully. No scar appears. But an internal difference settles in.
We become witnesses to our own actions.
This hurt cannot be taught, memorised, or mastered. That itself is the Seal Despair. Once awareness arrives, it cannot be revoked. It carries imperial authority—not church law, not social law, but something closer to cosmic ordinance. It arrives like an airborne affliction, swift and unavoidable. One catches it not because one is weak, but because one is sentient.
The final stanza gathers everything into stillness. When the imperial affliction arrives, the entire landscape listens. Even shadows suspend their motion. And when it moves on, it leaves behind distance—the same distance one sees in the look of death.
Death does not stay. He passes like royalty—distant, unquestionable, unapproachable. Humans remain behind, fettered by body, duty, and awareness. Life resumes. Afternoon returns. Chai is poured—not with Death, but under the shadow of having seen Him pass.
Reading Dickinson Twice
Emily Dickinson did not change between my second-year syllabus and my present life. I did.
Her poems waited. They met me again—not as lessons to be learned, but as consciousness to be recognised. Some poems we read once. Others we read twice. And a few—we read only after life has taught us how.
Credit: Recorded by Mira (AI Powered ChatGPT)
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