There is a pain — so utter - Yale Daily News

In 2010, my dad died of ALS and I found a new favorite poem. The two are connected, I see that now. Back then, the link was hazier. I found the poem a few months after death found dad. Flipping through a collection of Dickinson, I stopped, perhaps by chance, on number 599. There is a pain — so utter — It swallows substance up — And covers the Abyss with Trance So Memory can step Around — across — upon it — As one within a Swoon — Goes safely — where an open eye — Would drop Him — Bone by Bone — A poem about pain. A black hole of pain, pain so vicious that it concealed itself from the mind. This confused me. Surely the mind concealed the pain. Why would pain ever black itself out — make itself less painful? Why did it not invite Memory to fall ceaselessly into the Abyss? Pain harms most when it is most present; that was how I saw it. And here, Dickinson was telling me that I had it all wrong. That the worst pain of all harms not with its presence, but by cloaking itself. By refusing it

In 2010, my dad died of ALS and I found a new favorite poem. The two are connected, I see that now. Back then, the link was hazier. I found the poem a few months after death found dad. Flipping through a collection of Dickinson, I stopped, perhaps by chance, on number 599. There is a pain — so utter — It swallows substance up — And covers the Abyss with Trance So Memory can step Around — across — upon it — As one within a Swoon — Goes safely — where an open eye — Would drop Him — Bone by Bone — A poem about pain. A black hole of pain, pain so vicious that it concealed itself from the mind. Thi