There is a Languor of the Life by Emily Dickinson

Есть жизненная вялость,
что неизбежней зла,
за болью длясь, когда душа
всё, что могла, снесла...

Рассеивая дрёму,
туману после слёз
обволочить сознанье,
как мгле - стереть утёс...

Хирург - не бледен болью,
строг навыком своим...
Но молви, что не чуялось
творенье перед ним,-

ответит - поздно поучать...
Хирургом посильней
служил пособщик до него -
а жизненности нет.




(Эмили - тем, кто резал её стихи по живому.)

[Ruth Miller links this poem with Emily’s second letter (L261)
to Thomas Higginson. It was written in April 1862 and begins,
‘Your kindness claimed earlier gratitude - but I was ill -
and write today, from my pillow. Thank you for the surgery -
it was not so painful as I supposed.’
Miller takes the surgery inflicted by Higginson’s criticisms
of the poems she had sent him to be the same as the illness
which causes her to write from her pillow. She is as prostrated
by his criticisms as much as a patient after a real surgical
operation. They were painful and severe. But Emily now
generously excuses him. He can always say, ‘If my criticisms
‘killed’ you, it was because my skill arrived on the scene too
late. A Mightier one than me, namely your friend Samuel Bowles,
had failed to give you enough encouragement and Vitality
to write verse that was alive.’]

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There is a Languor of the Life by Emily Dickinson

There is a Languor of the Life            
More imminent than Pain --               
'Tis Pain's Successor -- When the Soul    
Has suffered all it can --               

A Drowsiness -- diffuses --               
A Dimness like a Fog               
Envelops Consciousness --               
As Mists -- obliterate a Crag.            

The Surgeon -- does not blanch -- at pain   
His Habit -- is severe --               
But tell him that it ceased to feel --      
The Creature lying there --               

And he will tell you -- skill is late --   
A Mightier than He --               
Has ministered before Him --               
There's no Vitality.