Tuesday, December 20, 2011

then space began to toll.

I felt a funeral in my brain,
and mourners, to and fro,
kept treading, treading, till it seemed
that sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
a service like a drum
kept beating, beating, till I thought
my mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
and creak across my soul
with those same boots of lead,
then space began to toll.

As all the heavens were a bell,
and being but an ear,
and I and silence some strange race,
wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a plank in reason, broke,
and I dropped down and down--
and hit a world at every plunge,
and finished knowing--then--

-Emily Dickinson

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