GALL

GALL

GALL

Those from Aleppo were bitterest, 
yielding the vividest ink. More permanent
than lampblack or bistre, and at first pale grey,
it darkened, upon exposure, 
to the exact shade of rain-pregnant clouds, 
since somewhere in the prehistory of ink 
is reproduction: a gall-wasp’s nursery, 
deliberate worm at the oak apple’s heart. 
We knew the recipe by heart for centuries:
we unlettered, tongueless, with hair of ash, 
the slattern at the pestle, the bad daughter. 
But all who made marks on parchment or paper
dipped their pens in gall, in vitriol; even 
the mildest of words like mellow fruitfulness,
of supplication like all I endeavour end 
decay equally in time with bare, barren, sterile;
the pages corroding along all their script  
like a trail of ash (there is beauty in this)
as the apple of Sodom, the gall, turned
in the hand from gold into ashes and smoke.