A doubt if it be Us
 Assists the staggering Mind
 In an extremer Anguish
 Until it footing find.

 An Unreality is lent,
 A merciful Mirage
 That makes the living possible
 While it suspends the lives.

There is an Emily Dickinson poem that has been important to me for years, not one of her better known poems, I think, but startlingly appropriate in the wake of the tragedy . . .

Written about 1864, perhaps in response to the horrors of the Civil War . . . perhaps to reflect on some personal trauma . . . in her inimitable way, Dickinson speaks from the deepest recesses of the human soul, giving words to feelings that many of us find impossible to express.

Connie Rockman,
Stratford, CT