MRS DALLOWAY

"I would buy the flowers myself. 

It's a beautiful morning of June,

 the war is over

              my shattering bout of migraine 

                                                     ebbing away.

But I don't want the flowers Richard

uses to bring me home: 

                                         hybrid tea roses.

so run-of-the-mill, 

                                 so bourgeois.

I would buy the flowers myself:

dahlias, cyclamens, violets, hollyhocks,

the wild bunch Sally used to pick for me

under the moonshine in Sussex..

Aeroplanes, 

                   red and blue balloons,

                               doves flying over London.

 The war is over so my war 

                         against moths and nightmares.

I would buy the flowers myself 

                            at the florist in Westminster.

But not that hybrid tea roses

                              redolent of boasting men

 always talking about Wagner,

money, whorehouses, and armistice.

Dahlias, cyclamens, hollyhocks.

I want to get inebriated

                      with the wild aroma of Sally.

I want to get drunk with Sally

like boasting sailors

                               in the beer gardens

                                      of Wapping Old Stairs.

I would buy the flowers myself.

I am off, Richard!

                                be back soon.

Maybe to finish my novel

                              about someone called

                        Virginia Woolf."