storm’s electric moccasins are charged
for running down the wartrail - for pacing
through the woods - and nothing is camouflaged
from its hatchets save Emily facing
the empty path - left astounded why
doom never scalped her - how her home was missed;
so she snuck back up death’s trace - to spy
on that Occasionalist - on the tryst
God prepared her- to see how it unfolds -
except lightning caught in her kidneys
displaying urine’s crimson scouts from cold
along the way :- she who’d kept from medley
made of contingency a forest path;
of secret - kingdom and her epitaph
Blackwell’s
Oxford
29 September 2018
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was the great American poet and recluse of Amherst, Massachusetts. It is believed that she died of chronic nephritis, formerly known as Bright’s Disease, the symptoms of which are alluded to above. Quentin Meillassoux (b. 1967) is a most interesting French philosopher, the proponent of ” the necessity of contingency” and of a ” speculative Realism”.
Dickinson’s later poems between 1879-1883 betray scant signs, of a definite new theme. These traces depend on memories of the Indian trails or paths that were used by war parties during colonial wars in Massachusetts. She refers to ” doom’s electric moccasin” to describe the progress of a thunderstorm, as if along a wartrail, and she writes elsewhere of the “crimson scouts”, of “pillage”, and of a white peace pipe. I thought it good to place Dickinson in the outdoors away from the “shut-in” reputation which she has.
New Zealand is a country too of war trails. I have been at the wartrail at Owhango near the heads of the Whanganui River. The Natchez Trace from Tennessee to Mississippi is perhaps one of the most famous trails in the United States.