Adrienne Rich — Mourning Picture

The picture was painted by Edwin Romanzo Elmer (1850-1923) as a memorial to his daughter Effie. In the poem it is the dead girl who speaks. They have carried the mahogany chair and the cane rocker out under the lilac bush, and my father and mother darkly sit there, in black clothes. Our clapboard house stands fast on its hill, my doll lies in her wicker pram gazing at western Massachusetts. This was our world. I could remake each shaft of grass feeling its rasp on my fingers, draw out the map of every lilac leaf or the net of veins on my father’s grief-tranced hand. Out of my head, half-bursting, still filling, the dream condenses— shadows, crystals, ceilings, meadows, globe of dew. Under the dull green of the lilacs, out in the light carving each spoke of the pram, the turned porch-pillars, under high early-summer clouds, I am Effie, visible and invisible, remembering and remembered. They will move from the house, give the toys and pets away. Mute and rigid with loss my mother will ride the train to Baptist Corner, the silk-spool will run bare. I tell you, the thread that bound us lies faint as a web in the dew. Should I make you, world, again, could I give back the leaf its skeleton, the air its early-summer cloud, the house its noonday presence, shadowless, and leave this out? I am Effie, you were my dream.