Death sets a thing…
Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly
To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With “This was last her fingers did,”
Industrious until
The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then ‘t was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.
A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,–
At rest his fingers are.
Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.
~Emily Dickinson
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:12 am
Faye,
When I read the poem you sent, after reading the second stanza, I guessed the poet must be Emily Dickinson. It pleased me to know–after clicking on the title and scrolling down–that it was indeed she. Just an English Major moment.
Needless to say, it’s a good poem. I remember that I had not appreciated Emily Dickinson, a quiet poetess, esp. when compared to the giants of literature in the Western World–mostly male–, until Prof. ‘Ching’ Dadufalza analyzed her poems in class and showed us that simple sounding though they are, they are, in fact, quite difficult to analyze.
Other memories of ‘Ching’. When Den was her student, she gushed about a particularly spirited ‘recitation’ from him: “Eloquent, Mr. David!”
And, once when I met her at the bank, she told me, “Hija, ang gagaling ng mga anak mo.” There’s no higher accolade than that, coming from her. I was on Cloud 9 for days after that.
Incidentally, one of Ching’s close friends is Ef’s ninong and Den’s best friend in college, Manolo Lozada.