Vintage verse – Color – Caste – Denomination by Emily Dickinson

Color — Caste — Denomination

Color — Caste — Denomination —
These — are Time’s Affair —
Death’s diviner Classifying
Does not know they are —

As in sleep — all Hue forgotten —
Tenets — put behind —
Death’s large — Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand —

If Circassian — He is careless —
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde — or Umber —
Equal Butterfly —

They emerge from His Obscuring —
What Death – knows so well —
Our minuter intuitions —
Deem unplausible

by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Photo by Christine Klocek-Lim