My friend Emilie Glen, poet, actress, and pianist, had a lifelong
fascination with the Brontës. When a Brontë scholar named Norma Crandall
decided to tour a lecture on the Brontës, she asked Emilie Glen to
portray Emily Brontë, reading her poetry. This poem came from her
experience "channeling" Emily of the moors.
NAMED EMILY
by Emilie Glen
Named Emily, playing EmilyEmily Brontë,
I swim the timeless sea
to her heathered shore,
Climb the hill to the parsonage
not telling her I am from
the Twentieth century
where I breathe her to life stage nights,
Know better than to startle her
with the terrible Twentieth.
(Still the Twentieth could cure her TB.)
This too might alarm her
in her gathering of death like heather
Emily offers me tea
at the table where the Brontës
write of an evening,
The two of us sit in Emily shyness,
our words in leaf bracts on separate trees,
I am keeping her from the moors,
from the fires of her white page,
I would suggest we go out to the "lone green lane
that leads directly to the moors"
only I can't let on how well I know her life,
her death on the very horse-hair sofa
across from us
Ellen Nussey says she plays the piano
with brilliance and precision,
I chord into Debussy,
swiftly finger back to Bach
expecting her to sit down at the piano too,
but she has nothing to play to me say to me,
I might as well be in the graveyard
outside her window
Aunt Branwell and her Father will be coming in
any timeless minute,
Such a dark little parlor and she doesn't
even bother
to light the lamp,
I'll drink her tea
and warm-swim back to my shore
Note: Ellen Nussey (1817-1897) was a childhood friend of Charlotte
Brontë, and a lifelong correspondent.
This is selected from The Poet's Press volume, The Writings of Emilie
Glen, Volume 1: Poems from Chapbooks.
http://a.co/d/fDUKhJ6
