“The house is damp. The house is untidy. But there is no alternative.”
A Writer's Diary-Virginia Woolf
How do you know what this is? The dark red poppies and white syringas. Think of Viola laying dead, and the cramming in and the cutting out. Even the muscles on my right hand, jerking almost. A prodigious tapping and clearing and massing. I think it will begin like this: dawn, shells on the beach, voices of cock and nightingale; and then all the children at a long table—lessons. The moth must come in: the beautiful single moth. She might have a book—one book to read in—another to write in—old letters. Early morning light—the beginning. It’s the cold hour, this, before the lights go up.
What is the right antidote? I rubbed my mind brisk along the Newhaven Road. Shabby old maids buying groceries in the wet. When I look up I see all the marsh water. In the sun, deep blue, gulls, caraway seeds, Atlantic floor. Yellow islands, leafless trees, red cottage roofs. A virgin lip, no bungalos, as it was in the beginning.
In the wild, grey water. A blank. All frost. Still frost. Burning white. Burning blue. The elms red. I did not mean to describe, one more, the downs in snow, but it came. I bought the blue paper book. Like the milk girl, we found it boring.
Who’ll be killed tonight? What could we salvage in this little car? Darwin and the silver, and some glass and china, The picture of the world in books is thus too dark. The wordless are the happy, women in cottage gardens. How serene and gay even, their life reads to me: no mud, no whirlpools, . And so human.
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( In my forging through old poem files I also found this..a cento culled from Woolf's diaries. I think I initially wrote it for errata--where I was working with genres, but then didn't use it and promptly forgot about it. I had to retype it here since I can't even begin to figure out where I would have saved it. I rather like it and maybe I'll do some more just as some exercising of sorts.)
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( In my forging through old poem files I also found this..a cento culled from Woolf's diaries. I think I initially wrote it for errata--where I was working with genres, but then didn't use it and promptly forgot about it. I had to retype it here since I can't even begin to figure out where I would have saved it. I rather like it and maybe I'll do some more just as some exercising of sorts.)
