Silences (50 page)

                      
And is held low to freezing lips—

                      
Too rapt with frost

                      
To take it—

                      
’Tis true—They shut me in the Cold—

                      
But then—Themselves were warm

                      
Deprived of other Banquet,

                      
I entertained Myself—

                      
Had I not seen the Sun

                      
I could have borne the shade

                      
But Light a newer Wilderness

                      
My Wilderness has made—

                      
I was the slightest
in the House—

                      
I took the smallest Room—

                      
A loss of something ever felt I—

                      
The first that I could recollect

                      
Bereft I was—of what I knew not

                      
Not with a Club, the Heart is broken

                      
Nor with a Stone—

       
               
A Whip so small you could not see it

                      
“I want”—it pleaded—All its life—

                      
Hope is a subtle Glutton—

                      
He feeds upon the Fair—

                      
And yet—inspected closely

                      
What Abstinence is there—

“My business is circumference.”

But
even Emily Dickinson could not free herself to consummate her business. Trespass vision cannot make circumference. Nor can the most ascendant imagination. Vision must have a place from which (as well as territory) to observe. Imagination must have freedom, velocity—and ground from which to soar.

(And time, confidence, concentration, means.)

Many a woman writer seeking circumference—of whom I
am one
(Circumference, thou Bride of Awe)
—has had to abide by, solace herself with trespass vision; the “being one on whom nothing is lost.” They do not suffice.

            
O! dreadful is the check—intense the agony—

            
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;

            
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;

            
The soul to feel the flesh,
and the flesh to feel the chain.

—Emily Brontë

▴
ONE OUT OF TWELVE, P
. 40–41

▴
ONE OUT OF TWELVE, PP
. 40–41