Hour of Lead
This is the Hour of Lead — Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow — First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go. Emily Dickinson #372
The peculiar gray of a New England dawn,In early autumn, just as leaves begin to change,Stabs me to the quick with the memory of youAnd the faded green of hopes we once shared.
I think of it as Emily’s seasonWhen I recall our walks together in the parks—Parks seemed to be everywhere, but, I now think,Nowhere, too, as our steps kept missing the beat.
Emily can move you to feel the grayAs if it were an air hand-painted with remorse,Every bit as delicate as the dying leafSlowly curling its way to the cruel ground.
Had we admitted what we really wanted,It would have been no different, I believe.You wanted to live in a happy family,I wanted to prove escape is possible—
Emily would demur we had already All we needed of hell, heaven long since departed,And she would be right, but we were too youngTo test the demons disguised in our desires;
And so they turned them into suits of sorrowWe never managed to remove, that second skinOf disillusionment all of us wearTo protect ourselves from idealism.
As cynicism armor-plates our lives,We fill our diaries up with excusesFor pretending the easy ways were hard,And frequent shivers tell the tale on us.
It’s the cold, really. Long before winter,It’s already cold, the appalling gray Weighted down by not quite yet visible iceStinging you, even so, as your tears well and fall.
It seems you can never bundle up enoughEven if memory is not also sleeting;The warmth you so want to harbor withinBelongs to a life you no longer live.
This is the heart-breaking gray I felt that dawn—Lost the light that might once have lifted it.Emily understands what we did not: Seasons are seasons because they’re never the same.
This is the Hour of Lead — Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow — First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go. Emily Dickinson #372
The peculiar gray of a New England dawn,In early autumn, just as leaves begin to change,Stabs me to the quick with the memory of youAnd the faded green of hopes we once shared.
I think of it as Emily’s seasonWhen I recall our walks together in the parks—Parks seemed to be everywhere, but, I now think,Nowhere, too, as our steps kept missing the beat.
Emily can move you to feel the grayAs if it were an air hand-painted with remorse,Every bit as delicate as the dying leafSlowly curling its way to the cruel ground.
Had we admitted what we really wanted,It would have been no different, I believe.You wanted to live in a happy family,I wanted to prove escape is possible—
Emily would demur we had already All we needed of hell, heaven long since departed,And she would be right, but we were too youngTo test the demons disguised in our desires;
And so they turned them into suits of sorrowWe never managed to remove, that second skinOf disillusionment all of us wearTo protect ourselves from idealism.
As cynicism armor-plates our lives,We fill our diaries up with excusesFor pretending the easy ways were hard,And frequent shivers tell the tale on us.
It’s the cold, really. Long before winter,It’s already cold, the appalling gray Weighted down by not quite yet visible iceStinging you, even so, as your tears well and fall.
It seems you can never bundle up enoughEven if memory is not also sleeting;The warmth you so want to harbor withinBelongs to a life you no longer live.
This is the heart-breaking gray I felt that dawn—Lost the light that might once have lifted it.Emily understands what we did not: Seasons are seasons because they’re never the same.
