Friday, March 5, 2010

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

By Billy Collins
From Picnic, Lightning

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers;
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.


2 comments:

Jan Smelk said...

I hate to be self indulgent in the face of such beauty, but why aren't I talented?

(...as the old lady waits to see if she got into college and is gutted with alternating confidence and despair....specializing in second best may not be enough this time...)

Anonymous said...

The only way this concept will work is if Megan Fox has been cast as "Emily Dickinson".

 
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