{"id":1108,"date":"2016-05-30T08:43:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T15:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1108"},"modified":"2016-05-31T17:03:30","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T00:03:30","slug":"the-green-children-of-woolpit-by-j-s-watts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/?p=1108","title":{"rendered":"The Children of Woolpit, by J. S. Watts"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1112\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1112\" src=\"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Monument_\u00c3\u00a0_Goethe_Strasbourg_13-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"By Coyau\u00c2\u00a0\/\u00c2\u00a0Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=12817103\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1112\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-1112\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">By Coyau\u00c2\u00a0\/\u00c2\u00a0Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=12817103<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Dusk is the hour<br \/>\nwhen memory pulls strongest,<br \/>\nwhen twin green tendrils<br \/>\nof hope and despair<br \/>\nsnarl my gut<br \/>\nand tug hard.<\/p>\n<p>The day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dying light<br \/>\ntastes of home,<br \/>\nmy lost, soft, twilight world<br \/>\nsoaked in all the shades of life<br \/>\nI seek fruitlessly amongst<br \/>\nthe beans on my meagre plate.<\/p>\n<p>As you would say,<br \/>\nwe came here green and<br \/>\nignorant of your ways,<br \/>\nlured by a rich siren call of bells,<br \/>\nthe brightness of your land<br \/>\nburning in my eyes<\/p>\n<p>like a forest of emeralds,<br \/>\nshiny promises that lied<br \/>\nthough we did not know that then:<br \/>\ntwo innocents trapped by your false splendour<br \/>\nas much as the wolf pit<br \/>\nyou found us in.<\/p>\n<p>We clung to our green truth<br \/>\nfor as long as we could,<br \/>\nstarved until raw beans were offered<br \/>\nthen kale, cabbage, the bread of life.<br \/>\nWe continued to eat,<br \/>\nto consume your world,<\/p>\n<p>thinking to immerse<br \/>\nyour ways within us,<br \/>\nto become one with their enticing shine,<br \/>\nbut they washed away our colour<br \/>\nand spat us out<br \/>\nleaving me one alone.<\/p>\n<p>My brother-self withered,<br \/>\ngave up the struggle,<br \/>\nhis soul returning<br \/>\nwhere his body could not.<br \/>\nI took a native mate, trying<br \/>\nto grow myself whole again.<\/p>\n<p>I allowed him to immerse<br \/>\nhimself in me, hoping<br \/>\nto become one with your ways.<br \/>\nThe town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard stone streets<br \/>\ntaught me I<br \/>\nwill always now walk alone.<\/p>\n<p>They say I lead<br \/>\na normal life.<br \/>\nNormal for whom?<br \/>\nI have lost my colour,<br \/>\nmy world,<br \/>\nmy self.<\/p>\n<p>I am faded as pale as you<br \/>\nexcept at dusk, the hour<br \/>\nwhen memory pulls hardest,<br \/>\nand fresh green tendrils of despair<br \/>\ngrow and snarl<br \/>\naround my gut. <\/p>\n<p><em>The Suffolk folk tale of the green children of Woolpit apparently dates from the twelfth century. The reapers were out working in the fields around the village, when out of one of the wolf pits emerged two vivid green children, a boy and a girl, their clothes unfamiliar and speaking in an unknown language. At first they wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat, but eventually did, beginning with beans and vegetables. After a period of assimilation, including being baptized into the Christian Church, the boy died, but the girl lived on, learnt to speak English, married a local man and moved to King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Lynn where she purportedly led a normal life.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dusk is the hour when memory pulls strongest, when twin green tendrils of hope and despair snarl my gut and tug hard. The day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dying light tastes of home, my lost, soft, twilight world soaked in all the shades of life I seek fruitlessly amongst the beans on my meagre plate. As you would say, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}