Poet's Choice

A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

For the Nerves to "sit ceremonious like Tombs" blends three ideas in one puzzling phrase. Then from that stasis comes a mechanical move from Earth to open space to "Ought" (ought also suggesting what one should do). This freefall is countered by a heaviness "like a stone" echoing the Tombs of the first stanza.

This is the Hour of Lead --

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --

First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

The final line is broken into a stumbling step -- two beats, then three beats, then five. The beloved is wrenched away through paralyzing cold, for which the poem is warming balm.

("I'm Nobody!," as reprinted in "The Life of Emily Dickinson," by Richard B. Sewall. Harvard Univ. Press, 1974. Copyright 1974 by Richard B. Sewall. "After Great Pain" is reprinted in "The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry," edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, Robert O'Clair. Copyright 2003 Norton. )

Mary Karr has published four books of poems, most recently "Sinners Welcome."