Merivale

On the 28th March 1941, Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse. The following is an Ekphrastic poem inspired by the painting of her sister, Vanessa Bell, by fellow Bloomsbury Group member, Duncan Grant. This poem is a moment wherein Vanessa is writing to her sister, only a week or two after her death, where life continues to break back in, with all of its sharp edges. 

Have you ever been to Merivale? 

She writes. While 

Angelica, (six), fist full of flowers, arranges them in a pattern similar to that of the painted tile of the hearth. 

Violet stalks with purple faces for the V and daisies for the W while she sits, cross-legged, in the milk-dish of sunlight coming in through the half-open door. Have you ever been to Merivale? 

She begins again. Blots the end of the pen, nib down for too long on the fold of cloth. 

Watches the ink bleed out blue, blue, blue…Perhaps 

She falters, 

Perhaps we shall go, you, me 

A song thrush in the wisteria just outside of the window calls from her nest, Leonard whistles back from where he stands between the tulips

Vita perhaps, 

Angelica hums a tune half-forgotten and half-remembered, 

and the children, of course, they do so love to see you. 

She smiles, watches her daughter weave her own initials with petals from the Forsythia. 

And, upon our last visit, Angelica fell rather in love with a cow which she gave your name to 

Out in the garden again, just by the door, Angelica picks weeds, plucked with the hollow sound of the milk thistle or dandelion stalk 

A brown cow, all doe-eyes, soft-muzzle. Standing on legs with knees like pollarded trees. She smiles. Gains momentum. Shifts in her chair that creaks and scrapes against the flag-stone floor. 

Netty’s here, folding your stockings, rolling them into yellow balls like eggs - like eggs, in a basket. 

As soon as she is gone, I’ll unravel them, fitting perhaps, for I seem myself unravelled. She hears Netty on the stairs. Knows the satisfaction she will gain from this rolled nest of previously unravelled and unkempt stockings. 

Did I tell you I see Vita now? 

She comes to dinner in your place, sits in your chair with its back to the fire, with some hesitation, of course. 

She looks at me. And I in her see you, and you in me she sees, though neither of us has spoken of this of course.

Instead, darling Tom slaps cards down upon the table, Queen of Hearts upturned, only fleetingly, between her and I, 

And then, of course, Duncan slaps his card down too - the King, perhaps, of Spades, as suits him, and the moment passes, without whistle or trace 

The song thrush sings again, greets her mate with a beak of soft sheep’s wool scraps. 

- only the echo for which I have spent these last few weeks digging for beneath the roots of speculation, only to find dust and grit, the shrivelled bulb of a daffodil dug up too often and the skull of a blackbird buried by Angelica, I am sure, though at your behest. Now, the ticking of the clock, the whirr, the readying, readying, then the chime. Too loud. Always, too loud. 

She closes her eyes, waits, waits, for stillness, and then 

Have you ever been to Merivale? 

She has digressed for too long. 

I ask not because of the (now) literary bovine, but because, in passing a cottage I noticed a young woman, a girl, perhaps, sat, elbows on the windowsill, Mrs Dalloway between her hands - and it was such a shock to see you there, so suddenly, so starkly, in this house painted the colour of our Cornish sea, because you see (as only you do, you did) I look for traces of you, without knowing it at all, and I find I cannot speak, cannot say, as you would have done, so eloquently, but I cannot, neither with voice nor with pen the pain it is to glimpse you so suddenly, and so sharply within your absence. The house is quiet, the bird has flown, Angelica has gone, the garden too tempting.

Such is death. 

The stillness stretches. 

But one of these days we may contrive to speak again. Who knows? Again, the stillness 

My darling Virginia, I miss you. 

And this letter is nothing, without you to receive it. The hesitancy of pen held above paper. 

Yours, always, 

V.