Читать книгу Virginia Woolf in Manhattan - Maggie Gee - Страница 12

5

ANGELA

Virginia smelled. Of mud, and roots. People were pausing and sniffing the air as they pressed through those great library doors. I wasn’t able to be objective. I thought, it’s a dream, of course it’s a dream, but please don’t make me wake up until –

I needed to learn what she had to teach me. Maybe everything. About life, and writing. She had the secrets. She’d reached the end. The hard truth people can never tell us. At least, that’s something I’ve always thought. Not till the end is the pattern complete. But then they slip away through the gate. They can’t come back, we can’t ask questions.

Yet here she was. Virginia.

VIRGINIA

Have I slipped my leash?

I think that’s it.

I’ve made it through to the other side, the place I never

believed could be.

At first I thought, banally, I was dreaming.

Now, all round me, this dream has flesh

bars bricks towers trees tall silver-grey trees

beside the library crows yes flown out of my past

friendly crows ‘Kaar, Virginia’

& now I have to find the others.

(I don’t think everyone is here. No matter, so long as Leonard is.)

He must be here. He wouldn’t leave me.