Empty my heart of thee — (146)
Empty my heart of thee —
Its single artery,
Begin to leave thee out —
Simply extinction’s date.
Much billow hath the seam
One Baltic — they,
Subtract thyself, in play,
And not enough of me
Is left to put away —
“Myself” meant thee.
Erase the root, no tree ;
Thee — then no me —
The Heavens stripped,
Eternity’s wide pocket picked.
From The Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson. This poem is in the public domain.