Hoary Plantain

HOARY PLANTAIN

 

Hoary plantains are the spirits

Of old men, growing thin on top,

But sporting magnificent sideburns.

 

They stand at attention on the verge,

Waiting for some chafer’s weight

To bend them, or for a girl

To kneel and pluck their whiskers

One at a time, pouting her patience,

Rustling in muslin. She picks

Him clean, pulls off his head,

Wraps it reverently in a leaf of dock,

Then hides it under a stone.

 

Will they have grown again by dawn,

Those grizzled whiskers? Then love

Is sure. But should she find him

Smooth-cheeked as her intended,

It were better she had not begun.

 

Source material: In Berwickshire, the scapes of plantain are picked clean of anthers, wrapped in dock leaves, and buried under stone. If new anthers appear overnight, “then love is certain” (Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, p. 357). The hoary plantain, Plantago media, is obviously the best species to use for this form of love-divination, since it produces such a multitude of anthers, and the laborious process of removing them one by one assists in building magical intent. Poem by Giles Watson, 2009

 

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