Millennial Canto 9 Poem by Sally Evans

9 (I)
Who makes a language finds a land.
Who finds a land may also make
a language, stating league and lake,
mapping the shore with shaking hand.
James Sowerby the Londoner
figures each hawkweed, pheasant's eye
sent from the meadow garden suburbs
by clergymen whose main concerns
are families of compositae,
devotion to Parochial ferns,
the good and godly use of herbs.
From Anglian and Dorset hedges
flock broomrape, snowdrop, snowflake, sedges,
amiable and accomplished misses
send him chamomiles for kisses,
from Darlington and Scotland, Eire,
by wild confederates, weed in hair,
minute distinction of shape and stem
guiding and inspiring them,
leagues wandered, trophies trapped, they act
like Sowerby's eyes, perceive each fact.
What would Sowerby not have done
with motorcar and telephone?
Though travelling words would overrun
the very plants they touch upon,
and travel turn the road to stone,
Sowerby plucked his fame alone
and with a draftsman's verity
he traced out for posterity
a floral grammar nature lacked
and gathered nature's names, new-mown
in perfect branches, jewelled and low.
Complete two hundred years ago,
our grey-leaved language, like a tree
bowed by the climate, gracefully
accepts its future fate, atop
its classical supremacy.
We feel it falter, sense its drop
and hear its insular creak and groan -
in that tree lodged your nest, your perch,
yours and mine, our collingual search.