A SAPPHIC ELEGY (VITA SACKVILLE-WEST TO VIRGINIA WOOLF)

 

I

Forlorn in London with no Virginia

melancholy descends on me:

I miss when she folds a green shawl

around her shoulders like a peacock

preening her train of feathers.

Oh when I am old and dying, Virginia,

 I wish you read Orlando aloud to me,

you my artichoke flower towering

 among yellow dahlias,

my anchor entangled in gold nuggets

 at the bottom of the sea:

 endless stormy sea of delusion.

I touch the green raincoat, the brooch,

 the hot water bottle you left(after love)

 in my Pink Tower.

In this endless stormy sea of masquerade

you remain 

                    as the brightest beacon...

...but I did leave Virginia standing

 on her doorstep

                                 in a misty London, 

trying to open like a desert flower

                                 under a cloudburst.

So there is blur on the edge of wisdom:

this poem.

There is a blur on the edge of this poem:

myself.

I am writing you now from Cairo or maybe Teheran?

or rather Beirut? Wherever but sipping 

demijohns filled with Shiraz wine:

I definitely ignore where I am

when daydreaming of you.

II

Enisled on the land of our last hopes

you rumple my hair, knot my emerald pearls

 dazzling into the gloom.

The silver fish of your soul 

                             slipping through my fingers.

I in purple Turkish tunic 

                                             by the gas fire,

You in orange and black dress

                                             and a straw hat

with feathers like Mercury's wings.

"Please come and bathe me in serenity again"

"Don't rumple the hair of Sybil,

 oh Virginia, don't"

You, waving at the doorstep in blue apron

to my blue Austin going through the meadows

toward the lighthouse of your smile.

"Greece with you in May"

                                            -I shouted

but I saw you no more that year...

"Please when you are in the South

 think of me"

Isfahan with its blue domes

it is not more stunning 

than your blue apron

      waving adieu.

III

Forlorn in London with no Virginia,

she has kept me in thrall on my knees

kissing her ghost like a golden relic 

in a Florentine church

"Fra Angelico, you remember,

         painted on his knees"

London is too cold, full of funerals,

 influenza, stray cats and floozies.

I long to be in Monk House,

 near the bust of Venus in the garden

or sitting on the floor by you, 

no undergarments,

flashing my legs

while Leonard guts the herrings

     and plants hollyhocks.

Oh how I relish on this wanton lust

even at seeing the runs

           and dirt of your stockings.

London smells of stale lipstick, 

manure and petrol.

"Life is only a passing of phantoms, 

a crowing of cocks"

you say while playing about my pearls

 as a child with his marbles...

...but I only hear, across the marshes,

 the heavenly sound

from harps made of cryshantemums.