This week’s offering by the American poet Richard Wilbur (see also weeks 29, 144, 264, 355, 417 and 630) has his characteristic neatness of touch, but its line of thought, in so far as I follow it, is a bit tendentious. Willbur, who was an Anglican, seems to be saying that those who fail to follow the prescriptions of a strict religious observance, in this case Christian, risk falling prey to destructive superstitions of a worse kind. So the holy oil must be blessed at a certain time by a suitably qualified person – ‘Does that revolt you?’ he asks. Well, no, it doesn’t revolt me, it just seems a bit daft. ‘Things must be done in one way or another’, he concludes. All right, but who says the alternative to his way has to be seeking out the spiritual equivalent of a poisonous tree to sit under – why not simply do what seems good to do without mumbo-jumbo of any kind? To take a humble example, at about this time of year a lot of volunteers from my village spend their evenings on ‘toad patrol’, making sure that the local amphibians can cross the roads safely on their way to the ponds where they spawn. This is done without recitations from scripture, ritual invocations to deities and the promise of a place in heaven, and apparently for no other reason than that they, like Thomas Hardy in last week’s poem, share a desire that ‘such innocent creatures should come to no harm’. Still, if people find meaning and comfort in ritual observances who am I to say them nay.

And I did like finding out about the manchineel. This is a very toxic tree that grows in South America: the modern Spanish name for it is manzanilla de la muerte, ‘little apple of death’. The Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, he of Florida fame who probably didn’t actually spend his time searching for the Fountain of Youth, died from a wound from an arrowhead coated with manchineel sap.

The Rule

The oil for extreme unction must be blessed
On Maundy Thursday, so the rule has ruled,
And by the bishop of the diocese.
Does that revolt you? If so, you are free
To squat beneath the deadly manchineel,
That tree of caustic drops and fierce aspersion,
And fancy that you have escaped from mercy.
Things must be done in one way or another.

Richard Wilbur