Sent various—scattered ways—
We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze—
Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark—
A Flint unto this Day—perhaps—
But for that single Spark.
***
Emily Dickinson and her imagery of stone and minerals. Here she and the one from whom she is parted are chips of flint, which at one time met and created a spark (and the meeting of flints that produce a spark is not soft, but sudden, hard, one may almost say a violent event). And except for those brief sparks, the two are cold, hard, lifeless flint for eternity.
To me, the further metaphor is that of poems from a flint. And for that, the flint must be alone, must be by itself, striking air, and from the nothingness it strikes appears the poem. What a vision of the artist as a little God, creating, in a shower of sparks, a world from the void.
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