Death, I think, was always very near the surface of Virginia’s mind …
—Leonard Woolf
The two of you living at Monk’s House
in the village of Rodmell, weekends, holidays
and when the bombs blitzed London
shattered the fragile shell of your home
then dog fights, in the air above you here
a battle for more than Britain
On the threshold, uneasy ghosts
Vita and Vanessa, Maynard, Lytton,
TS with his wasteland
they all came here, suitcases packed
with intellect, mania and doubt
too much for one small cottage
Outside, sunshine greens the ordered garden
herbaceous borders much as they were
three weeks it took to find you
before he could scatter the ashes
of what was left
under the elm, just beyond the pond
Now your face and his, carved in relief
plaques set into a low flint wall
and a quotation which he chose
from The Waves
two pairs of eyes gaze past me
fixed resolutely on some distant point
At the end of the garden your writing lodge
overlapping white, weathered boards
and inside, behind protective glass
the desk set square and solid
blotter dry now, pen idle and your glasses
laid aside, just so
A room of one’s own
but some inner tyrant ordered perfection
worked you eighteen hours a day
euphoria eclipsed by disillusion
air thick with thoughts
heavier than the stones in your pockets
Next door, in the churchyard
the silence of eight hundred years
a scatter of tombstones
names effaced by spreading lichen blooms
and in the breeze leaves shiver, filter my view
across the water meadow, to that river
not so deep any more