Τετάρτη 22 Ιανουαρίου 2014

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes... Billy Collins



Corinne Clery in Blufftel



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.

Billy Collins


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