Plants for dull sight,

for falls from heights.

Plants for flatulence, for fear of water,

for nostrils flowing with blood.

So Blooms—

the remedial florilegia.

By the dog the minced oaths,

the god-wounds, the solemnly

declared chronical maladies.

The bloody blankety blank …

So blooms

some small vulgarity.

The bad-rhyming carrion.

These unpoetical Asclepiads.

(Unmetrically unsucculent.)

The open wound-stenched.

The rot-ponged.

The rodenty.

*

Plants that draw out bile and phlegm,

that draw out broadworms and blood.

Plants to expel:

fish, fleas, flies and foxes, leeches, lice and nits.

Plants for bites of rodents and bites of vipers,

bites of mad dogs and bites of men.

Waste-eliminating plants and sin-purging plants.

Plants as enchantments and love-medicine plants.

So Blooms—

a vial of viola tricolor.

Orchard-bruised and unimpeachable.

Lungs clingy, windblown, heavy-huffed

with wild pansy, prussic, muzzily trussed.

Swig the cordial, the unpeachy lovelorn,

the falling-in falling-down sickness potion.

Lolly the asthmatic, the untamed wheezy.

Saturnine with hawkweed and horsetail.

Wild-thoughted summer and spring.

Cull me. Cuddle me. Call-me-to-you.

Pink-o’-the-Eye. Banewort. Constancy.

*

By the hair of the rampion.

Bell-flowered and ringing love.

Morning glory loves in vain.

Marigold despairs.

Mourn the vernal equinox.

Pour asphodel in purulent ears.

Cook the roots in ashes.

Regret follows to the grave.

’Struth—

the killing dead weight.

’Struth the cruelty in the extreme.

The great pains not taken—God’s truth

love-in-idleness cross the heartsease!

The three-colored, the three-faced inflamed.

[Book 1]

Oils, ointments, and trees.

The liquors, the gums, and the fruits that come of them.

“Pick me … ”

Peals the self-serving physic garden.

Gold-leafed in leaps and zounds

burgeons the marginalia,

the gleaming illuminations.

Premorbid and full-of-promise

these plant-stranded pages. O cruets

of ignorance. O cruets of bless

this body being pleasingly invested.

The balmy-sweet, the balsamy-

impulsive medicaments. The kiss-

sting of molasses consistency

(syrup-bitter hints iron not irony).

[Book 1]

Thickened oil of a thousand counted lilies.

Oil of daffodil, oil of pheasant’s eye.

Oil of must and oil of mayweed.

New myrrh and ling nut, the dregs of oil of saffron.

Knotted marjoram and oil of basil and oil of basil again.

“Pick me … ”

Pours it on thick as theriac the bush-

whacking physicians’ treacly heal-alls.

The calls to arm thyself then the Hail!

Hail! pronouncements, the decrees.

The tinctures of vitriol, of Jesuit’s bark.

The rough cathartics, the hell-

storming mercury. The bougies and fumes,

the fumigations, the fomentations.

Then equal parts bake-house and bagnio.

The poison-fed. The fever-starved. The

come-one-come-all the peccant-sweated.

*

Earth almond, cardamom.

True senna and mock sycamore.

Balm of Gilead, balm of Mecca.

New oil from unripe olives.

A half-pint purge of well-aged olive oil.

So Blooms the Aromatics

(those which warm the stomach, raise the pulse, quicken the circulation)

Rowan, Mountain Ash [Book 1.173]

Quickbeam guides the wayfarer.

Floral fossils and lamenting berries.

St. Valentine’s under a rowan moon.

In woodland and grove. Near bog and burn.

Rows of fermenting fruit trees.

Charlatan ash. Quack ash.

Whitty pear and quicken-tree.

Trees of plastered waxwings.