A 287: etext transcription

This brief, extrageneric fragment appears as a trace in two other documents, both composed around 1884 (THJ, RWF): first, as a trace in an incomplete poem-draft beginning "Most Arrows | slay but whom | they strike -" (A 637); and, second, as a variant trace (text altered) in another version of the poem beginning "Some Arrows | slay but whom | they strike" and embedded in a letter to Susan Dickinson In this case it is the first, "arrow" line of the poem, rather than the final lines, that achieves its own independent—lyric—trajectory. One stray pencil mark along the torn top edge of A 287 suggests that the fragment may have been torn away from its body. Corresponding pin holes on A 287 and A 637 indicate that the fragment and message-draft were at one time physically associated. In addition to appearing as a trace in A 637, A 287 may be obliquely connected with the text on A 637a: "Tis a dange | rous moment | for any one | when the meaning | goes out of things | and Life stands | straight - and | punctual X and | yet no contents (signal) | come[s] | Yet such mo | ments are | If we survive (survive) | them they Expand | us, if we do | not, but that | is Death, X whose | if is Everlasting | when I was a | little girl I called | the Cemetery | Tarry Town | but now I | call it Trans - | A wherefore | but no more | and X the if | of Deity - Avalanche | or Avenue - Every | Heart asks which." A single passage from the text on A 637 appears, altered, in a letter to Catharine Dickinson Sweetser (Rosenbach 1170 / 18 [26]), also possibly composed around 1884 (THJ): "I thought | the Churchtown | Tarrytown, when | I was a Child, | but now I trust | 'tis Trans -." The following line of the letter, "In this place of | shafts, I hope | you may remain | unharmed -," however, appears to allude not to the text on A 637a but, rather, to the text on A 637 and, again, to the fragment. The "Arrows" of A 287, pinned to A 637 / A 637a, are unpinned and translated into the "shafts" that enter the fair-copy letter to Sweetser. The "Arrow" text thus demonstrates how fragments catalyze the migration and transmigration of meanings and intentions.