After Great Pain (c. 1864) by Emily Dickinson

From Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, an anthology by Anthony and Ben Holden.

After Great Pain (c. 1864)

by Emily Dickinson

After great pain a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious like Tombs;

The stiff Heart questions –

was it He that bore And Yesterday – or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round

A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought,

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the Hour of Lead

Remembered if outlived,

As Freezing persons recollect the Snow –

First Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go.

After Great Pain by Emily Dickinson was chosen by the actor Douglas Kennedy.

In the United States we are in love with one of the more spurious words in the modern lexicon: closure. This word is employed whenever the specter of tragedy has cast its shadow on a life. "I need to achieve closure" is a common element in the wake of a profound grief. Yet looking behind this proclamation is the equally spurious belief that the horrors which life can recap on us – and which we can also recap on ourselves – can be eventually placed in a box, put on the shelf, and shut away forever. 

Emily Dickinson's masterpiece of a poem points up one of the reasons why her work so endures and so resonates with the modern consciousness. It speaks directly to the heart of the matter. It doesn't flinch in the face of human contradiction and the way we all try to negotiate the worse that life can throw at us. And with the next diamond hard craftsmanship – it's lyrical economy, it's imagistic precision – Dickinson not only speaks volumes about the shadowland of despair that is the price of being given the gift of life, but also reminds us of one of the central truths with which we all grapple: to live is to harbor so many profound losses.