Told Cecilia

      Christina is waiting
      what is your name Christina
      thinks Christina and tries to feel
            Iona Volach. Christina

      by rosy glades
      passed me Cecilia
      spilling blue bells
            Iona Volach. Cecilia

      they chop of my head
      with a gladioli stalk
      and pick up my head
      with two gladioli stalks
      and pack up my head
      in rustling paper.
            Iona Volach. Ionatan


I

‘Cecilia never went to school
without her gladiator’ – it was
Christina Georgina Rossetti’s first poem
dictated to her mother, – told Cecilia. –
Cecilia always liked it,
although never understood.
Christina never went to school.
She couldn’t mean that ‘semivitalized
school’, – told Cecilia, – she and her mother
were, unremuneratively toiling and moiling at’
as brother William Michael wrote once.
Anyway, it was years after.
A mere verbiage on his part,
but it also made itself felt.
“Grown and Flown” – Christina wrote
and then: “Passing and Glassing”.
“Grown and Flown”, it was love,
“Passing and Glassing” was life,
but ‘toiling and moiling’ was Christina,
as brother William nicely put it.