This Chasm, Sweet, Upon My Life
poem 858
This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life I mention it to you, When Sunrise through a fissure drop The Day must follow too. If we demur, its gaping sides Disclose as ’twere a Tomb Ourself am lying straight wherein The Favorite of Doom. When it has just contained a Life Then, Darling, it will close And yet so bolder every Day So turbulent it grows I’m tempted half to stitch it up With a remaining Breath I should not miss in yielding, though To Him, it would be Death And so I bear it big about My Burial before A Life quite ready to depart Can harass me no more
This Chasm, Sweet, Upon My Life - meaning Summary
Facing a Persistent Chasm
The speaker calls an enduring inner void a "chasm" and describes its daily widening and tomblike implications. She considers closing it with a last breath that would spare her but kill "Him," an ambiguous other, and ultimately chooses to carry the burden. The poem frames this persistent ache as a kind of anticipatory burial: a private, weighty readiness for death that the speaker bears rather than resolving at cost to another.
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