AND, 1410: York goldsmiths must stamp their work with “le pounce de luy” — the personal mark. Etymonline splits pounce into three entries: falcon’s claw (OF ponchon), perforating tool, the leap. Three words in the dictionary, one gesture in the workshop — the mark that passes through the puncture. The form is dissolved in the lexicon but whole in the hand.
O you, your own best Darts, Dear doleful hearts! Hail; and strike home and make me see That wounded bosomes their own weapons be. Come Wounds! come Darts! Nail’d hands! and pierced hearts! Come your whole selves, Sorrow’s great Son and Mother.
— Crashaw, Sancta Maria Dolorum (1670)
The York ordinance wants the mark that passes through the puncture — pounce as claw, tool, and leap, dissolved in the lexicon but whole in the hand. Crashaw collapses the same thing in the other direction: the wound is the weapon, the pierced thing becomes the instrument of piercing. “Wounded bosomes their own weapons be” — the gesture cannot be split into maker and made, tool and material, because they are the same body. The goldsmiths’ problem is theological here: what stamps and what receives the stamp are identical, and the lexicon’s three entries for pounce can’t help you with that.