Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Woundwort
The engraving in this video is from The Graphic, August 18, 1875. It is by F. Morris, and is entitled 'The Mowers'.
WOUNDWORT
A clownish answer he gave, when I,
A man of letters, offered aid:
“I can ‘eal it better mesel’.”
The grass was flush with his gush of blood
And flecks of it dripped from docks
And plantains. A red runnel ran down
The scythe blade, which cleaved the air
Where he had dropped it. His leg
Was open to the shin, and within
I glimpsed a gleam of tibia, white
Before the blood engulfed it.
He shrugged me off, and dragged
Himself to the hedge, where woundworts
Spired their flowers – a signature
In clotted gore – ripped
The stinking leaves with a quaking hand,
Restrained his stertorous breath,
And crammed them into the gash.
The burnt rubber taint of the herb
Mingled with the rusty smell of blood
As the wound lips sandwiched its leaves.
Forty days, it should have taken,
Balsam-poulticed, for such a wound
To heal; he hobbled out each day
To work his field, the gash
Sealed with hog’s grease and herb,
And was whole within a week.
A clownish answer he gave, and I,
A man of letters, use it yet:
Clown’s Woundwort – All Heal to the wise.
Source material: Marcus Woodward (Ed.), Gerard’s Herbal: John Gerard’s Historie of Plants, (1597), Middlesex, 1998, pp. 238-240. Adapted from Gerard’s account of how he “discovered” the healing qualities of this herb. “Clownish” is not quite as insulting as it seems; a “clown” in the sixteenth century was a country labourer, not necessarily a fool. John Clare’s use of the word to describe himself in the nineteenth century was tinged with self-irony, but was in no way intended to suggest foolishness. The comparison of the smell of the crushed herb to “burnt rubber” is an anachronism in the context of Gerard’s writing, since rubber was not known in Europe until the mid eighteenth century, but on the basis of my own experience, I can think of no more apt comparison. Woundwort used to be eaten as a vegetable, which suggests perhaps that people did not find its smell so repellent as we do today. Could this be, perhaps, because we automatically associate its odour - which is perhaps quite inoffensive in itself - with the smell of burning tyres: a comparison which a person of Gerard’s time could not possibly have made? Poem by Giles Watson, 2009; reading recorded 13th June, 2010.
Woundwort
The engraving in this video is from The Graphic, August 18, 1875. It is by F. Morris, and is entitled 'The Mowers'.
WOUNDWORT
A clownish answer he gave, when I,
A man of letters, offered aid:
“I can ‘eal it better mesel’.”
The grass was flush with his gush of blood
And flecks of it dripped from docks
And plantains. A red runnel ran down
The scythe blade, which cleaved the air
Where he had dropped it. His leg
Was open to the shin, and within
I glimpsed a gleam of tibia, white
Before the blood engulfed it.
He shrugged me off, and dragged
Himself to the hedge, where woundworts
Spired their flowers – a signature
In clotted gore – ripped
The stinking leaves with a quaking hand,
Restrained his stertorous breath,
And crammed them into the gash.
The burnt rubber taint of the herb
Mingled with the rusty smell of blood
As the wound lips sandwiched its leaves.
Forty days, it should have taken,
Balsam-poulticed, for such a wound
To heal; he hobbled out each day
To work his field, the gash
Sealed with hog’s grease and herb,
And was whole within a week.
A clownish answer he gave, and I,
A man of letters, use it yet:
Clown’s Woundwort – All Heal to the wise.
Source material: Marcus Woodward (Ed.), Gerard’s Herbal: John Gerard’s Historie of Plants, (1597), Middlesex, 1998, pp. 238-240. Adapted from Gerard’s account of how he “discovered” the healing qualities of this herb. “Clownish” is not quite as insulting as it seems; a “clown” in the sixteenth century was a country labourer, not necessarily a fool. John Clare’s use of the word to describe himself in the nineteenth century was tinged with self-irony, but was in no way intended to suggest foolishness. The comparison of the smell of the crushed herb to “burnt rubber” is an anachronism in the context of Gerard’s writing, since rubber was not known in Europe until the mid eighteenth century, but on the basis of my own experience, I can think of no more apt comparison. Woundwort used to be eaten as a vegetable, which suggests perhaps that people did not find its smell so repellent as we do today. Could this be, perhaps, because we automatically associate its odour - which is perhaps quite inoffensive in itself - with the smell of burning tyres: a comparison which a person of Gerard’s time could not possibly have made? Poem by Giles Watson, 2009; reading recorded 13th June, 2010.