Vita’s Sissinghurst
Did she open her door each morning
and dream upon her heaven
with sunshine on her face,
and was the grass, silk washed
in lines, fingered by the sun?
And did the yews even then
throw deep shadows
over paving stones and bricks,
and sprawing drifts of blue through white;
and did the wallflowers, burn old red
between box hedges, fragrant
in summer’s slumbering noon,
and did the silver-plated birches, shine
against a drift of distant Downs
and marsh marigolds bend golden heads
to meet their faces, water mirrored.
And in the evening, did the sparrows
scuffle in thick creepers on the wall
below the open leaded window,
as she leaned, thoughtful, at the sill,
and dreamed upon her heaven?
Pim Claridge