Where grass still grows

DF said she felt like Emily Dickinson because like Emily Dickinson she felt like she was under a fog. The phone line was not very clear, so I could not hear everything she said, but I remember the first words that came into my head — death dew and immortality. I could not recollect the words of the poem which I loved as I recited in school just for its strangeness.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

Why the poem was included in our syllabus remains a mystery to me, it may have been the most extraordinary poem for Allen Tate, but for a class room of 15 year olds whose encounters with death and beyond, were noisy and scorching affairs under an unremitting sun? Immortality was not an option for any of them — they were all certain that they would return as monkeys or mynahs or frogs –in rare cases as men and women. One thing they were all certain of was that death was only a brief interruption like a visit to the headmaster’s office.Some worried as to whether they could retain their gender when they returned — but that was a very disturbing thought so nobody said it aloud. Returning with a cheek pouch or a pronounced beak or even a folded tongue from the HM’s office is one thing. Returning with ovaries was a different matter altogether.
I wonder if I am the only one in that class who remembers the poem. The thought of a quiet wedding in a horse carriage to a stranger and happiness in a place filled with dew soaked cobwebs and moss in a house that was no higher than a mound was so puzzling that my mind soaked all of it up like so many drops of brightly colored ink. The poem disappeared.
Reading it again was fun and made me homesick for Amherst where I have never lived but it is a place I will know anytime I pass through it. That is where Emily Dickinson saw the school children ’striving’ in the recess, that is where she saw the cattle grazing the ripe grass. She would have gone on forever had Mr. Immortality not come calling in a carriage driven by Mr. D and had there been no place in the world where the sun would not set. That is where she lives.

And someone is building an e archive for her here.

M has a job interview at Amherst, MA. I am happy for her. I think it will be good for everyone. It is a compact little town about which all I know is that during the 90s, the University had one of the most progressive Indian student population. Two of my best friends studied in the business school there. SK still teaches there. And it has at least two big names — one in geography and one in anthro. The town of less than 40000 people is celebrating the 250th anniversary in 2009. Dont ask me what is the significance of the year 1759 — counting backwards – cuz I dont know but if you want random information about the place it is here.