Poem
Elisabeth Bletsoe
from Pharmacopoeia
from Pharmacopoeia
from Pharmacopoeia
Stinking Iris (Iris Foetidissima)Kilve
sea-cliffs &
a green confluence of
waters
daggered leaves
of flower-de-luce
cut your smile
in slices
of salt light
under a fossil
triturate, I conceal
charred letters
for you to dis-
cover
these stones are shaped by
desire, though you
will not believe it;
it is a country where you are,
a delicate
recurve of tepals
a ‘pencilling’ of purple-gray/
blue-gray
on tombs at Carnac:
Iris who leads a woman’s soul
to the fields of Elysium
“growing more grateful & aromatic
as it dries”
Cow-Wheat (Melampyrum Pratense)
Five Lords\' Wood, Quantock
visions of finding
the source
among these juicy
sluices
sweat dries
& cools as we ascend
by leaf by moss by fern
fleck
in aqua-
shadow
acts of rapine
on the grass, a
contamination
ground down
to poverty bread
the strong grip of your hand
as you pull me
over a dream threshold
making a moue
in the darkness
(petal-tube)
“hold me
or I will escape you”
Elder (Sambucus Nigra)
Culbone
voltage
accrued
since before
Atlantis
leprous crystals
irrupt
each atom, the woods
become hyaline;
incandescent
in shadows of
narcolepsy
Eldrun
or Hyllan-tree
wherein a witch
embarks herself, will
bleed
at midsummer,
reverse
lightning
where
vortices
of 5-petalled flowers
brush lips
skin
hair
by yeast
& muscatel
we are both now
forespoken
Stinging Nettle (Urticus Dioica)
Castle Hill, Stowey
infesting the
perimeter of the
incendiary field we
lie down in
& fall into the sky
cirrus fibrils a
prolegomenon
to thorms in the S.W.
veins of sorrel & leporine
spoors
& the 2 pale horses
what should they signify?
“beset with little prickles”
flagella for the
subjugation of wayward
flesh
(an early photographer of the Linnaean
collection having been stung by a nettle
dried 200 years)
though makes a good thick
soup
heating &
rich for the blood
© 1999, Elisabeth Bletsoe
From: Pharmacopoeia
Publisher: Odyssey Poets + Terrible Workpress, Somerset
From: Pharmacopoeia
Publisher: Odyssey Poets + Terrible Workpress, Somerset
Elisabeth Bletsoe
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1960)
“Elisabeth’s poetry is not just highly unusual, it is an anomaly. Although at times it has been generatively linked to new age concerns and at other times to linguistically innovative late modernism, her work is, in the modern context, healthily and excitingly independent. When I first encountered it, her work seemed to be a form of highly-charged symbolism, by which I mean Symbolism as in the ...
Poems
Poems of Elisabeth Bletsoe
Close
from Pharmacopoeia
Stinking Iris (Iris Foetidissima)Kilve
sea-cliffs &
a green confluence of
waters
daggered leaves
of flower-de-luce
cut your smile
in slices
of salt light
under a fossil
triturate, I conceal
charred letters
for you to dis-
cover
these stones are shaped by
desire, though you
will not believe it;
it is a country where you are,
a delicate
recurve of tepals
a ‘pencilling’ of purple-gray/
blue-gray
on tombs at Carnac:
Iris who leads a woman’s soul
to the fields of Elysium
“growing more grateful & aromatic
as it dries”
Cow-Wheat (Melampyrum Pratense)
Five Lords\' Wood, Quantock
visions of finding
the source
among these juicy
sluices
sweat dries
& cools as we ascend
by leaf by moss by fern
fleck
in aqua-
shadow
acts of rapine
on the grass, a
contamination
ground down
to poverty bread
the strong grip of your hand
as you pull me
over a dream threshold
making a moue
in the darkness
(petal-tube)
“hold me
or I will escape you”
Elder (Sambucus Nigra)
Culbone
voltage
accrued
since before
Atlantis
leprous crystals
irrupt
each atom, the woods
become hyaline;
incandescent
in shadows of
narcolepsy
Eldrun
or Hyllan-tree
wherein a witch
embarks herself, will
bleed
at midsummer,
reverse
lightning
where
vortices
of 5-petalled flowers
brush lips
skin
hair
by yeast
& muscatel
we are both now
forespoken
Stinging Nettle (Urticus Dioica)
Castle Hill, Stowey
infesting the
perimeter of the
incendiary field we
lie down in
& fall into the sky
cirrus fibrils a
prolegomenon
to thorms in the S.W.
veins of sorrel & leporine
spoors
& the 2 pale horses
what should they signify?
“beset with little prickles”
flagella for the
subjugation of wayward
flesh
(an early photographer of the Linnaean
collection having been stung by a nettle
dried 200 years)
though makes a good thick
soup
heating &
rich for the blood
From: Pharmacopoeia
from Pharmacopoeia
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