[God gave a Loaf to every Bird —] by Emily Dickinson

[God gave a Loaf to every Bird —]
Emily Dickinson

God gave a Loaf to every Bird—
But just a Crumb— to Me—
I dare not
eat it— thơ
I starve—
My poignant luxury—

To own it— touch it—
Prove the feat— that made
the Pellet mine—
Too happy— for my Sparrow’s chance—
For Ampler Coveting—

It might be Famine— all around—
I could not miss an Ear—
Such Plenty smiles upon my Board—
My Garner shows so fair—

I wonder how the Rich— may feel—
An Indiaman— An Earl—
I deem that I— with but a Crumb—
Am Sovereign of them all—

SELECTED BY LUISA A. IGLORIA

Dear Emily,

It is this poem, of all your poems, I keep returning to through the years: its dark, hard pellet around which my hand, knuckle-fisted, has closed; but which, whenever I open my palm again to look, I find has expanded, like a piece of fermented, spongy bread. A living thing; sustainable, sustaining.

So much has already been written about this and your other poems that have the theme of stoic abstention in the face of hardship: given “just a Crumb,” you “dare not eat it— tho’ [you] starve—” Here you show how the contemplative self or heart, diminutive like a bird and dwelling in its spare isolation, must feel when regarding the comparative wealth of others and the plenitude of other ways of being in the world.

But then I learned, too, that “Indiaman” was what they called any of a number of large sailing ships used for trade between Europe and the East Indies, especially by the East India Companies.

I still wonder what else might have specifically occasioned this poem. Forgive me, but perhaps because I am a person of color, a woman born and raised in a third world country, where the poor are visible everywhere one looks, I cannot read this poem without considering how it is an indictment of poverty—no, not poverty itself but those seemingly invisible and abstract forces which control the distribution of wealth, of what we call luck or chance: “God gave a Loaf to every Bird—/ But just a Crumb— to Me.”

The self that is less abundantly blessed, that has less of an ability to possess the object/s of its desire, comes to find solace in its spartan practices. A little becomes the world, a crumb becomes “poignant luxury.”

ABOUT LUISA A. IGLORIA

Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Caulbearer (Immigrant Writing Series Prize, Black Lawrence Press, 2024), Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Co-Winner, 2019 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Prize), The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis (2018), 12 other books, and 4 chapbooks. She is lead editor, along with co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the U.S. (Paloma Press, 2023). Originally from Baguio City, she makes her home in Norfolk VA. Luisa is the 20th Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-22), Emerita.