What's O'Clock/The Sisters

by Amy Lowell

THE SISTERS

Taking us by and large, we're a queer lot We women who write poetry. And when you think How few of us there've been, it's queerer still. I wonder what it is that makes us do it, Singles us out to scribble down, man-wise, The fragments of ourselves. Why are we Already mother-creatures, double-bearing, With matrices in body and in brain? I rather think that there is just the reason We are so sparse a kind of human being; The strength of forty thousand Atlases Is needed for our every-day concerns. There's Sapho, now I wonder what was Sapho. I know a single slender thing about her: That, loving, she was like a burning birch-tree All tall and glittering fire, and that she wrote Like the same fire caught up to Heaven and held there, A frozen blaze before it broke and fell. Ah, me! I wish I could have talked to Sapho, Surprised her reticences by flinging mine Into the wind. This tossing off of garments Which cloud the soul is none too easy doing With us to-day. But still I think with Sapho One might accomplish it, were she in the mood To bare her loveliness of words and tell The reasons, as she possibly conceived them, Of why they are so lovely. Just to know How she came at them, just to watch The crisp sea sunshine playing on her hair, And listen, thinking all the while 'twas she Who spoke and that we two were sisters Of a strange, isolated little family. And she is Sapho—Sapho—not Miss or Mrs., A leaping fire we call so for convenience; But Mrs. Browning—who would ever think: Of such presumption as to call her "Ba." Which draws the perfect line between sea-cliffs And a close-shuttered room in Wimpole Street. Sapho could fly her impulses like bright Balloons tip-tilting to a morning air And write about it. Mrs. Browning's heart Was squeezed in stiff conventions. So she lay Stretched out upon a sofa, reading Greek And speculating, as I must suppose, In just this way on Sapho; all the need, The huge, imperious need of loving, crushed Within the body she believed so sick. And it was sick, poor lady, because words Are merely simulacra after deeds Have wrought a pattern; when they take the place Of actions they breed a poisonous miasma Which, though it leave the brain, eats up the body. So Mrs. Browning, aloof and delicate, Lay still upon her sofa, all her strength Going to uphold her over-topping brain. It seems miraculous, but she escaped To freedom and another motherhood Than that of poems. She was a very woman And needed both.

And needed both. If I had gone to call, Would Wimpole Street have been the kindlier place, Or Casa Guidi, in which to have met her? I am a little doubtful of that meeting, For Queen Victoria was very young and strong And all-pervading in her apogee At just that time. If had stuck to poetry, Sternly refusing to be drawn off by mesmerism Or Roman revolutions, it might have done. For, after all, she is another sister, But always, I rather think, an older sister And not herself so curious a technician As to admit newfangled modes of writing—"Except, of course, in Robert; and that is neitherHere nor there for Robert is a genius." I do not like the turn this dream is taking, Since I am very fond of Mrs. Browning And very much indeed should like to hear her Graciously asking me to call her "Ba." But then the Devil of Verisimilitude Creeps in and forces me to know she wouldn't. Convention again, and how it chafes my nerves, For we are such a little family Of singing sisters, and as if I didn't know What those years felt like tied down to the sofa. Confound Victoria, and the slimy inhibitions She loosed on all us Anglo-Saxon creatures! Suppose there hadn't been a Robert Browning, No "Sonnets from the Portuguese" would have been written. They are the first of all her poems to be, One might say, fertilized. For, after all, A poet is flesh and blood as well as brain And Mrs. Browning, as I said before, Was very, very woman. Well, there are two Of us, and vastly unlike that's for certain Unlike at least until we tear the veils Away which commonly gird souls. I scarcely think Mrs. Browning would have approved the process In spite of what had surely been relief; For speaking souls must always want to speak Even when bat-eyed, narrow-minded Queens Set prudishness to keep the keys of impulse. Then do the frowning Gods invent new banes And make the need of sofas. But Sapho was dead And I, and others, not yet peeped above The edge of possibility. So that's an end To speculating over tea-time talks Beyond the movement of pentameters With Mrs. Browning.

With Mrs. Browning. But I go dreaming on, In love with these my spiritual relations. I rather think I see myself walk up A flight of wooden steps and ring a bell And send a card in to Miss Dickinson. Yet that's a very silly way to do. I should have taken the dream twist-ends about And climbed over the fence and found her deep Engrossed in the doings of a humming-bird Among nasturtiums. Not having expected strangers, She might forget to think me one, and holding upA finger say quite casually: "Take care. Don't frighten him, he's only just begun." "Now this," I well believe I should have thought, "Is even better than Sapho. With Emily You're really here, or never anywhere at all In range of mind." Wherefore, having begun Tn the strict centre, we could slowly progress To various circumferences, as we pleased. We could, but should we? That would quite depend On Emily. I think she'd be exacting, Without intention possibly, and ask A thousand tight-rope tricks of understanding. But, bless you, I would somersault all day If by so doing I might stay with her. I hardly think that we should mention souls Although they might just round the corner from us In some half-quizzical, half-wistful metaphor. I'm very sure that I should never seek To turn her parables to stated fact. Sapho would speak, I think, quite openly, And Mrs. Browning guard a careful silence, But Emily would set doors ajar and slam them And love you for your speed of observation.

Strange trio of my sisters, most diverse, And how extraordinarily unlike Each is to me, and which way shall I go? Sapho spent and gained; and Mrs. Browning, After a miser girlhood, cut the strings Which tied her money-bags and let them run; But Emily hoarded—hoarded—only giving Herself to cold, white paper. Starved and tortured, She cheated her despair with games of patience And fooled herself by winning. Frail little elf, The lonely brain-child of a gaunt maturity, She hung her womanhood upon a bough And played ball with the stars—too long—too long—The garment of herself hung on a tree Until at last she lost even the desire To take it down. Whose fault? Why let us say, To be consistent, Queen Victoria's. But really, not to over-rate the queen, I feel obliged to mention Martin Luther, And behind him the long line of Church Fathers Who draped their prurience like a dirty cloth About the naked majesty of God. Good-bye, my sisters, all of you are great, And all of you are marvellously strange, And none of you has any word for me. I cannot write like you, I cannot think In terms of Pagan or of Christian now. I only hope that possibly some day Some other woman with an itch for writing May turn to me as I have turned to you And chat with me a brief few minutes. How We lie, we poets! It is three good hours I have been dreaming. Has it seemed so longTo you? And yet I thank you for the time Although you leave me sad and self-distrustful, For older sisters are very sobering things. Put on your cloaks, my dears, the motor's waiting. No, you have not seemed strange to me, but near, Frightfully near, and rather terrifying. I understand you all, for in myself— Is that presumption? Yet indeed it's true—We are one family. And still my answer Will not be any one of yours, I see. Well, never mind that now. Good night! Good night!