There was a strong scent of tomato soup on my route to work this morning. I wonder if someone is spraying for skunks.

oooh, I'm trying to crawl through the work day.
The last bit of this Emily Dickinson poem has been burbling its way into my head for a week or two. I think the poem is worth reading to the end. I guess I'm in the mood for a gorgeous tragedy today.

I didn't much care for Emily Dickinson's poems, when I was in high school. I spent a lot more time looking at them in college, and gained more appreciation. She seems to have been a pretty strange person. Most of her punctuation is in the form of dashes, for starters. She wrote a whole lot of poetry, bound it herself, and kept it in her closet. She was apparently an agoraphobe as an adult, and maybe never had a "consumated" romantic relationship. I have this little book of the "master letters," she wrote, seemingly to somebody. She certainly did not lack passion.

Sevres is a French porcelain. Here's the poem:

# 640
by Emily Dickinson


I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to –
Putting up
Our Life – His Porcelain –
Like a Cup –

Discarded of the Housewife –
Quaint – or Broke –
A newer Sevres pleases –
Old Ones crack –

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down –
You – could not –

And I – could I stand by
And see You – freeze –
Without my Right of Frost –
Death's privilege?

Nor could I rise – with You –
Because Your Face
Would put out Jesus' –
That New Grace

Glow plain – and foreign
On my homesick Eye –
Except that You than He
Shone closer by –

They'd judge Us – How –
For You – served Heaven – You know,
Or sought to –
I could not –

Because You saturated Sight –
And I had no more Eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise

And were You lost, I would be –
Though My Name
Rang loudest
On the Heavenly fame –

And were You – saved –
And I – condemned to be
Where You were not –
That self – were Hell to Me –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –

Re-formatting somebody else's 30-page table at work is like a mini-laboratory on the formation of personal superstitions.

If I double click on this column, click my heels three times, and my cube-neighbor coughs, everything lines up just right!