Nick Drake and Emily Dickinson Meet in the Afterlife

They are cautious virgins, and unfriendly

as they have always been.

These two never loved the flesh, so death

is already peculiarly their own. Breathless

they look each other up and down—

her eyes that famous residual sherry,

his blank as stones on the riverbed.

They both wear white now, though she always has.

They feel awkward in their wings, find

the light brighter than they wished, unfettered consciousness

a terror for those whose art was limit.

This is to say they recognize each other. Neither

expected this. The end, they thought,

would mean a sealed box, a final solitude,

the heart intact as an egg, forever.

He tells her about the thin grey light

when the songs came, halting, in pieces,

and she tells him about her furtive sleep,

and a thousand poems hidden in a drawer.