Consolatio: Emily Dickinson: Color, caste, denomination

Machiavelli: Reading, I forget every pain

Emily Dickinson: Color, caste, denomination—these are time's affair

Color - Caste - Denomination -

These - are Time's Affair -

Death's diviner Classifying

Does not know they are -

As in sleep - all Hue forgotten -

Tenets - put behind -

Death's large - Democratic fingers

Rub away the Brand -

If Circassian - He is careless -

If He put away

Chrysalis of Blonde - or Umber -

Equal Butterfly -

They emerge from His Obscuring -

What Death - knows so well -

Our minuter intuitions -

Deem unplausible

—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

Photo by Hellerhoff, Wikimedia Commons

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