Only until this cigarette is ended by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The hiatus has been due to a friend visiting from out of town and I’m having trouble getting back into the swing of things. I will turn, for inspiration, to my dearest Edna.
Only until this cigarette is ended
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smile not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun as set.
Phew! Wondered if you were unwell. Good to see you’re back again!
You know, I’ll read Millay, and I’ll think maybe she was a little too successful, a little too clever, and I’ll get cynical about poetry and wonder about who gets remembered and why, and wonder if she really deserved all that attention.
And then I’ll come across one of her poems like this one, and it will blow my content, self-righteous little canoe completely out of the water and into the next ocean. She can touch moments with words and make them echo as if they were shared memories. Yes, I’ll say to myself. I’ve known that feeling she’s describing. I’ve been there, felt that, and briefly am living and breathing in her written space for just that tiny second.
And what she describes is too tragically real to read twice.
I think that’s why I don’t own a lot of books by Millay. When she hits her target, her poems are too painfully hard to read a second time.