My Wordless Wednesday this week was an odd looking machine – but all machines are odd to me! For those wondering what it was, here’s the answer!

The ‘Vita’, was Vita Sackville-West, an English writer, poet and gardener, best known for her affair with Virginia Wolfe and the wonderful garden she created at Sissinghurst, Kent.

Here is the opening section of the poem ‘Sissinghurst’ as in the photo above.

A tired swimmer in the waves of time

I throw my hands up: let the surface close:

Sink down through centuries to another clime,

And buried find the castle and the rose.

Buried in time and sleep,

So drowsy, overgrown.

That here the moss is green upon the stone.

And lichen stains the keep.

I’ve sunk into an image, water-drowned,

Where stirs no wind and penetrates no sound,

Illusive, fragile to a touch, remote,

Foundered within the well of years as deep

As in the waters of a stagnant moat.

Vita Sackville-West 1931