Emily Dickinson's Sestina for Molly Bloom
Barbara Lefcowitz

At times I almost believed it: madness
the only way to say yes,
to stumble into shapes of night
that gape open like abandoned wells--
This would work like no other

disguise--yet I chose another
route, neither mad
nor well
enough to shout yes!
when morning scissor-blades opened
my sack of night

full of valentines to death--Night
whose curve of darkness I preferred to other
hours' slanting light that would open
all my closed lives--not the madly
flowered darkness that would make you say yes!
but--I might as well

admit it--the well-
sealed kind of night
where I could nod yes
to another
sputter of benign madness
from the loaded gun of an open

wound whose red opening
was never stanched well
enough; if only I hadn't feared the mad
shudder-burst & bloom demanded by your night
I would have become another
woman, spread open like a figtree in my father's northern garden, Yes

or--yes!
a house with its shutters open
to another
throng of lovers climbing my well-
flowered hair night after night,
all Amherst going mad,

its quartz contentment split open by the pulsing night--
Molly, as well become you as another--
Yes, and my heart going like mad and yes saying yes I will yes!