FOUR POEMS ABOUT GOD, BY EMILY DICKINSON

He fumbles at your spirit
   As players at the keys
Before they drop full music on;
   He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance
   For the ethereal blow,
By fainter hammers, further heard,
   Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten,
   Your brain to bubble cool, --
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
   That scalps your naked soul.
 


I know that He exists.
Somewhere—in Silence--
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

‘Tis an instant’s play.
‘Tis a fond ambush—
Just to make Bliss
Earn her own surprise!

But—should the play
Prove piercing earnest—
Should the glee—glaze—
In Death’s—stiff—stare—

Would not the fun
Look too expensive!
Would not the jest—
Have crawled too far!


Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play—
In accidental power—
The blonde Assassin passes on—
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an approving God.


Those—dying then,
Knew where they went—
They went to God’s Right Hand—
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found—

 The abdication of belief
Makes the Behavior small—
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all--