The Pain, the Plain, the River and the Sea

— Winter has come —

Jordan River Valley Plain, Dead Sea, Promised Land, 1836

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, a formal feeling comes – (372)

– by Emily Dickinson

And the gulf enters the sea and so forth,

none of them emptying anything,

all of them carrying yesterday

forever on their white-tipped backs,

all of them dragging forward tomorrow.

it is the great circulation

of the earth’s body, like the blood

of the gods, this river in which the past

is always flowing. every water

is the same water coming round.

every day someone is standing on the edge

of this river, staring into time,

whispering mistakenly:

only here. only now.

— Lucille Clifton

the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf