Forever is composed of Nows
One of America’s greatest poets, Emily Dickinson remains largely an enigma. Dickinson tells how it is to be a human being in a particular moment, in compressed, hard, blazingly vivid poems. Her greatest seem not sung but forced into being by a craving for a kind of forbidden knowledge of the unknowable.
Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –
From this – experienced Here –
Remove the Dates – to These –
Let Months dissolve in further Months –
And Years – exhale in Years –
Without Debate – or Pause –
Or Celebrated Days –
No different Our Years would be
From Anno Dominies –
© The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by R. W. Franklin
(Harvard University Press)