The Familiar Demons
​​(Virginia Woolf 1881 - 1941)

There is a crow—or the oiled shadow
   of a crow thrown up against the garden gate,
 
& the metallic gasp of the latch closing
   just a breath short of her fluttering skirt.
 
There is the clean, sun-warmed-fruit scent
   of her skin which floats in the almost imperceptible
 
breeze of her wake & thirteen diminutive moons
   strung through with gold which light the open
 
question of her unbuttoned collar.  In her belly,
   like fanned cinders, a small ache begins to grow
 
as she moves across the water-meadows, under branches
   where fragile vespiaries hang like faerie lamps
 
from which the fire has been plundered.  The taste
   in her mouth is blank pages, ash, the sour burn
 
of despair which drives her to the river’s dark lip
   where she will begin to live through what she will
 
never live through.  Seven stones, seven shy graces
   she gathers from the silt & razor grass, her silhouette
 
already neck-deep in rising tide as she buries
   their heft in the lush pockets of her fur coat
 
which is the color of brandy in firelight.
   What worth is a life, she reasons, where the arguments
 
for tomorrow come stillborn?  Where the body remembers
   being broken & broken, as a bottle pounded by surf
 
is shattered into tiny galaxies, a dangerous beauty
   like an iron maiden whose golden form belies
 
the tearing blades inside.  The familiar demons have
   stirred from their sulphured sleep.  Demon of Doubt
 
 in her tattered gown.  Black Demon of Madness.
   Demon of War stumbling through London’s ruined
 
streets.  Twin Demons of 1904 & 1913 holding
   out their handfuls of summer sky & Veronal.
 
Better then, to let water bracelet each
   pale ankle, delicate wrist, the heartbreaking
 
cygnet throat, to surrender to the mouths
   of eel & gray mullet until each bone becomes
 
a distant star’s reflection.  Strange comfort
   in the embrace—chill but amniotic.
 
The deep thunder of a great bell tolling
   rushes in her ears as she takes the first
 
terrible breath beneath the river’s scarred
   surface.  She is only a little afraid
 
as her teeth clamp fast against her tongue,
   salt warmth washing her throat.  She cannot
 
stop breathing, sinking, watching noon’s light
   recede to a small coin, a pinpoint—then out.
 
Days later, cool rain & rising tide will unstitch
   each print her feet embroidered along the muddy
 
bank, though all those singing, silver needles
   will be unable to touch her as she drifts
 
below, hair bound by long grass & dead wood,
   her blue hands waving a silent benediction over
 
each sagging pocket, each stone resting within--
   that sweet weight which tugs back at the moon.