Possibility

inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson

I

Bright stage. The Daughter discovered, alone.

Daughter
She won a freedom in a room,
You may have heard; drew ink,
And pages forged, a world
Acclaimed; she'd asked them burnt.

A dark art's hope, from what remains
Rekindling that soul.
Concocts of paste are all I speak,
Pure counterfeits I show.

Yet, in hermetic volume, I
May character an open page;
Yet hid from heavens' censure, once
A sinful thought disclose;

And to those ordered in their rows,
Accustomed to the few,
Feign gracious introduction:
I'm No-one - that you know.

And No-one stays at home.

I pleaded faintness of the sun,
And faintness of his work:
Fires made, baths filled, a breakfast fixed,
They bathed and ate and went to church.

II: Prose

Enter the Father, the Son and the Mother.

Son
And all to whom I spoke concurred in the excellence of the sermon: do you not agree, Father?

Father
I do. A splendid peroration, full of profit and edification, and rendered with pious zeal. To hear the great truths of Divinity so expounded so, one must profess bewilderment that some prefer to waste their attention in the fruitless idleness of chatter!

Mother
(to Daughter) What news I heard this morning. I must tell you: it's quite extraordinary. This is what you miss at church, well or unwell.

Son
Why, Father, it's unconscionable.

Father
Do they imagine that their friends, fresh from the enlightenments of the coffee-house or the billiard-hall, possess some rare knowledge denied to our clergy? Or rather, do they seek there to escape the truth?

Mother
Ms. Amity passed on to me the recipe for the brandy-cake that she prepared for last Tuesday's tea-morning.

Father
Rightly might they fear, however vain their flight. To shirk so elementary a duty is surely a sign of reprobation. Collectively, they may exchange reassurances that they are safe -

Son
They may -

Father
Assuredly they may, but they, like all, must come to arbitration alone.

Mother
Perhaps you weren't among us. But I tried them all, and in my judgement, they were the best. I shall make some this afternoon.

Father
That destiny is inescapable. The Lord has chosen from the moment of our conception the path which we must take: the reprobate to be damned, the elect only to be saved.

Mother
She guarantees that they will rise, without fail. Though good yeast is hard to come by.

Father
Their numbers, it is known, are few; but we must not be shy of confronting the truth. Indeed, to be shy of confronting the truth is certainly a sign of reprobation. Our character proclaims our fate more surely than any star.

Mother
Yes: I shall add some candied peel and dried fruits to those for Mrs Budd and Ms Compagne. They have not been well. Perhaps these will speed their recovery.

Father
Take, by way of example, the field of industry. You would agree that virtue's sole expression is in action.

Mother
Mr Dee, I hear, is most persistent in wooing Miss Eliza; she -

Son
So it's said by many.

Father
Thus, those whose action is the most extensive are the most virtuous. But, whence comes the will to these works? It can only be from the Lord. Hence, accomplishment and success in the world are themselves marks of the elect; failure an indubitable sign of reprobation.

Mother
Most counsel her to accept, given his considerable wealth, but she has conceived an irrational dislike of the man; she finds him vain and grandiloquent.

Father
Of course, I myself have had some measure of success, as you know - though I don't desire to advertise myself -

Mother
The matter is common knowledge now.

Father
It only arose from a chance remark. The topic of transportation had arisen -

Son
As well it might in a circle as informed as ours -

Father
And I believed myself qualified by my experience in the field to lend my judgement, which by simple logic is best expressed through my own endeavours. As such, I thought I should summarise the extent and progress of the work I am presently overseeing.

Mother
Is the roast done?

Daughter
Not enough.

Father
I was not, I assure you, motivated by any desire to be glorified by my auditors.

Son
Yet they did so admire you, Father.

Mother
And the vegetables?

Daughter
Nor the vegetables.

Father
It would be immodest of me to accept such praise, though in truth I am glad of the kind sentiments which conceive it.

Mother
Mrs Fescue has been blessed with a child. Old Lady Grant has, however, died.

Father
More deserving of our acclaim our statesmen, our engineers, our servicemen, who as I speak are working to uphold our security and prosperity.

Mother
Miss Holden is still waiting for news from her cousins abroad. She is becoming quite doubtful about it.

Father
Working against those who would strike at our culture, before they can take the chance. Investing themselves in the cause of honour, of valour, of dignity -

Mother
She hardly knows if they are alive or dead!

Father
Freedom. Justice. Truth!

Mother
Communications are bad in that part of the world.

Father
How is lunch coming?

Daughter
It comes. Excuse me, please -

Exit Daughter. Stage darkens.

III

Dim stage. Enter Daughter.

Daughter
Prose! I'm drowned - steeped - fathoms deep
In bog prolixity!
I'm deaf: the drumming, droning dirge!
I'm dumb: the same of me?

I cannot sham that numb exchange,
The self imported, telling goods:
I fled upstairs, the realm elsewhere
The inner value's understood.

I'll have no prose. Just speech enough:
Concision's sovereignty
In possibility's domain,
Confounding fixity.

IV: Possibility

Enter the Father, carrying a drum.

Father
From action you absent yourself.
You would deny the world.

Daughter
No: I would find it.

Father   In a room?
You need a task of work.
Experience doesn't grow in doors:
It's got in struggle, for the good.

Daughter
That teaches nothing but to count
Up bodies, and recite the dead.
Your fight perverts your principles.

Father
We know that they are true.

Daughter
You'd bend the earth until they were.
My truth's from nature drawn.

Enter the Mother, carrying a drum.

Mother
From common knowledge you dissent.
What better do you know?

Daughter
I'm not of intuition's few.

Mother
Objecting, you're alone.
You must assent to talk with us:
A trifling business to maintain -

Daughter
Until I die, to choke my time
With speech, yet never tell my soul?
A trifling business, this, indeed!

Mother
We nourish us with talk.

Daughter
You void yourself of clogging words.
In solitude I'm full.

Enter the Son, carrying a drum.

Son
From public view you hide away.
Does fear make you aloof?

Daughter
I don't seek eyes' approval.

Son
Your absence draws reproof.
Their valuations give our worth:
Without them glory knows no man.

Daughter
My treasures made exhibits, held
In reputation's trembling hand?
Then brazen vanity is all?

Son
We like a certain fame.

Daughter
You slave for stark uncertainty.
I've surer stay at home.

The Father, Mother and Son begin to beat their drums.

Daughter
Those doubts are done.
A resolution comes,
Through marrying death:
A ceremony both
Of real, of fake - a solemn joke -
Of genuine and false.
I need no priest's
Authority to trust.

In a round, all intone:

The chapel's gloom;
The shadows are its beams.
The service, drums,
Until the heartbeat cease.
The guests are some
Arriving from a dream.
The pledge is doom:
A binding to release.

Daughter
My doubts are done.

The Father, Mother and Son have vanished. Before the Daughter stands the Master.

Master
So it seems.

You know me, by so many names
You chose - that grassy fellow, God,
The Devil, Nature - most, the Master.

Daughter
They aren't the same.

Master   I am: the same.
The names, the fragments of the head,
Shards mirroring a centre.

Daughter
Which is?

Master   I won't extrapolate.
I'll only be. That's poetry,
You know; or so I thought you did.
But as we are to join, I'll try.

I turn the year's circumference,
Revolving lives from ripe to rot,
The waste to take from lower rungs
And grain to gather from the top.
Once, they took me for some god
Or other - for the circling sun,
Life-spirit, bringer of the crops -
And worshipped. Then they had some sense.
But now, they separate me out
For their moral convenience,
To wheat and chaff, to right and wrong,
That might be one; or worse, debase
Me to some poet's quaint device -
Fate, Fortune - when that piety's gone.

Daughter
I was sincere.

Master   No doubt; no less
Mistaken.

Daughter   Now I doubt again.

Master
It hardly matters now - once here,
Once from the height you've jumped the wheel;
It's rather light -

Daughter   I'd rather dark
Than be among the pallid saved
In righteousness that cannot feel,
Proclaiming prose-hypocrisy.
I'd leap, in whole sincerity
Of evil.

Master   I have no concern
With that distinction. If I had,
To plunge you to some sermoned hell
Of lightless flame and pain perpetual
Or fling you up to blinding jubilee
Would be death's moment. Is it so?

Daughter
Not yet.

Master   There's yet no more.

Daughter
Why did you come?

Master   On invitation.
Rare, the willed request.
Such urgency none could refuse&
It tempted, I confess.

Daughter
And so you say to all, I'm sure.

Master
All poets.

Daughter   Why make that selection?

Master
But the noblest of affection.

Daughter
You mean this to impress? The truth.

Master
A question that's the answer.

Daughter   Truth?

Master
Or she that seeks it most.
Who studies nature for itself
Shall complement me best.

Will you accept?

Daughter   No woman could
Refuse; nor man, nor living thing.
Reluctance, normal to this end,
Is waste.

Master   I fear it may be long
Before you'll see this journey's end.
Here lies a distance to traverse.

Daughter
A daunting?

Master   Only an obscure:
Though many tread, an unmapped course.

Daughter
And travel how?

Master   We'll take the stage:
Watch, seated side by side,
Your passing life - that foreseen play -
Until the house is closed.

The stage darkens.