Letters from Dickinson to Frances and Louise Norcross

late 1872

TO: Louise Norcross FROM: ED

. . . How short it takes to go, dear, but afterward to come so many weary years - and yet 'tis done as cool as a general trife. Affection is like bread, unnoticed till we starve, and then we dream of it, and sing of it, and paint it, when every urchin in the street has more than he can eat. We turn not older with years, but newer every day.

Of all these things we tried to talk, but the time refused us. Longing, it may be, is the gift no other gift supplies. Do you remember what you said the night you came to me? I secure that sentence. If I should see your face no more it will be your portrait, and if I should, more vivid than your mortal face. We cannot be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg.

A word left careless on a page

May consecrate an eye,

When folded in perpetual seam

The wrinkled author lie.

          Emily.

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Longing, it may be, is the gift no other gift suppliers

Is this not what the Japanese uta (歌) tradition also knows — that the poem is an efficacious object, traveling across distance and time to soak, stain, pierce through (身に染み渡る) body (身) and mind (心)?

We cannot be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg.

And Dickinson again, this time the Word that will not become flesh

Each one of us has tasted

With ecstasies of stealth