Auteur: Giles Watson
Beschrijving:
These photos were taken on a particularly glorious day in June last year. There is a little side-track off the ridgeway, just up from Kingstone Lisle, where common spotted orchids, St. John's Wort, wild thyme and other flowers bloom in profusion. This was one I didn't recognise, but I think it is Yellow Wort (Blackstonia perfoliata): a yellow gentian.
It is not the type of gentian I had in mind, but it will do for the time being as an illustration for this poem, which I wrote not long after the death of Dr Kelly.
GENTIANS
To go out to die, when the poetâs powers fail,
With your cheek on the green, chalk-paled grass,
In a glade by the leafy wood, gazing at gentians.
Where the adder curled about the plant
Which purged his poison, rest, eye-level
With the sun-seeking petals, the tubed calyx
Fringed with pale hairs, the reddened stems
And paired leaves from a suit of spades.
Wait for the stillness when the wars fade,
When weapons rust and bombs implode
Into purse-petalled simplicity, when asylum
Doors clang open, when woes, self consumed,
Are forgotten, and all is one purple flower.
The sweet singing cuckoo gone, the fond turtles
Mated and flown, the sparkling brooks
Cloud-dulled, the love-lorn nightingale sated,
There is only silence, and these gentians.
Source material: John Clare, âProse on artificial nature poetryâ in Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield (Eds.), Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, Oxford, 1978, p. 66: âPastoral poems are full of nothing but the old thread bare epithets of âsweet singing cuckooâ âlove lorn nightingaleâ âfond turtlesâ âsparkling brooksâ âgreen meadowsâ âleafy woodsâ etc etc these make up the creation of Pastoral and descriptive poesy and every thing else is reckond low and vulgar in fact they are too rustic for the fashionable or prevailing system of rhyme till some bold inovating genius rises with a real love for nature and then they will no doubt be considered as great beautys which they really areâ [sic]. Still one of the great unsung heroes of nature poetry - and one with a philosophy to live and die for - John Clareâs woes are described in his own poem âI amâ, which reflects on his bouts of mental illness and imprisonment in an asylum. The poem above was inspired by my own observation of a Chiltern gentian (Gentianella germanica) at the Warburg Nature Reserve near Nettlebed on 20th August 2003, and by discussions, aired on the radio as I drove home, about the inquiry into the death of Dr. Kelly. The Anglo Saxons called all gentians âFeld wyrtâ (Fieldwort), and recommended the powdered root as a cure for addersâ bites, but it would be foolish to experiment with the remedy these days, given the scarcity of gentians. See Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore and Healing, Norfolk, 2000, pp. 296-297.
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