Wound/Wound (wind/wind)

Wound/Wound
(wind/wind)
 
The one: (n.) from Old English wund, “hurt injury, ulcer,” leads to (v.); “Figurative use, of feelings, etc., from c.1200.” From Ayto’s research: “…may go back to the same IE root that produced Welsh gwanu, ‘stab.’” [“Stab,” incidentally: “noun, wound produced by stabbing…mid 15th-Century”; meaning “a try,” first recorded 1895-American, “stab in the back” 1881, and “verb, late 14th-Century, ‘thrust with a pointed weapon,’ Scottish.”]
 
The other: to wrap around. From Ayto: “originally meant ‘go in a particular direction’” and leads eventually to “wander.” [Note about this below.] Past participle of “wind,” which leads to another bold homonymy:
 
Wind/Wind: Air in a state of blowing and the act of wrapping around. The flautus that condition speech may wrap around us.
 
Poem comes from this:
The wound wound round
like a staircase winding
winding the one aching to ascend.
 
Note on “wander”: Wind—wrapping around—meant “to go in a particular direction,” and yet “wander,” its heir, means to go in no particular direction. Perhaps we all should wander more aimlessly through language in order to figure out the precise direction in which we’d like to wind our words.
 
Sources:
Etymonline: http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=wound
John Ayto, Dictionary of Word Origins