A Dream of Solstice

Qual e' colui che somniando vede,
che dopo 'l sogno la passione impressa
rimane, e l'altro a la mente non riede,
cotal son io...

Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII

'Like somebody who sees things when he's dreaming
And after the dream lives with the aftermath
Of what he felt, no other trace remaining,

So I live now', for what I saw departs
And is almost lost, although a distilled sweetness
Still drops from it into my inner heart.

It is the same with snow the sun releases,
The same as when in wind, the hurried leaves
Swirl round your ankles and the shaking hedges

That had flopped their catkin cuff-lace and green sleeves
Are sleet-whipped bare. Dawn light began stealing
Through the cold universe to County Meath,

Over weirs where the Boyne water, fulgent, darkling,
Turns its thick axle, over rick-sized stones
Millennia deep in their own unmoving

And unmoved alignment. And now the planet turns
Earth brow and templed earth, the crowd grows still
In the wired-off precinct of the burial mounds,

Flight 104 from New York audible
As it descends on schedule into Dublin,
Boyne Valley Centre Car Park already full,

Waiting for seedling light on roof and windscreen.
And as in illo tempore people marked
The king's gold dagger when it plunged it in

To the hilt in unsown ground, to start the work
Of the world again, to speed the plough
And plant the riddled grain, we watch through murk

And overboiling cloud for the milted glow
Of sunrise, for an eastern dazzle
To send first light like share-shine in a furrow

Steadily deeper, farther available,
Creeping along the floor of the passage grave
To backstone and capstone, holding its candle

Under the rock-piled roof and the loam above.

Seamus Heaney

And when madness reigns in other words, a voice from a more familiar sanity...

And see you, after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul.

And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the downs?
O they are the lines the Flint men made,
To guard their wondrous towns!

Trackway and Camp and city lost,
Salt marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Jerusalem by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen

And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills
And was Jerusalem builded there
Among those dark Satanic mills

Bring me my bow (my bow) of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my (my) sword sleep in hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land

Tis about Glastonbury and the view to the Tor, or that's what I've always been told and believed, am probably completely wrong! And it's probably not megalithic, so don't know why I've posted this! :o)

They're all lovely, but a bit too long winded for my liking. i prefer mine, they're much more to the point.

Pix xx

One for Beltane (thanks to JC for this as it appears on page 389 of TMA).

Fane of the Druids: a poem

Time-hallow'd pile by simple builders rear'd!
Mysterious round, through distant times rever'd!
Ordained with earth's revolving orb to last!
Thou bringst to sight the present and the past.
Rapt with her theme, bold Fancy wings her flight
To silent ages long involved in night
Bids clouded forms arise to sight display'd
And scatters light along th' oblivious shade.

John Ogilvie (1733-1813)

Scroll down about one screensworth, where there's a nice poem about Cairns, by Stan Beckensall.

http://www.sanhs.org/Newsletters.htm#RockArt

Another from Northumbria. This is 'The Cowt's Grave' from Walter Scott's Border Ballads, and possibly refers to the remains of a lost four poster circle by the Deadwater burn. No-one's ever found it though.

this is the bonny brae, the green,
yet sacred to he brave,
where still, of ancient size, is seen
gigantic kielder's grave

the lonely shepherd loves to mark
the daisy springing fair,
where weeps the birch of silver bark,
with long dishevelled hair.

The grave is green, and round is spread
The curling lad- fern;
That fatal day the mould was red,
No moss was on the cairn.

Where weeps the birch with branches green,
Without the holy ground,
Between two ancient stones is seen
The warriors ridgey mound.

And the hunters bold of kielders train,
Within you castle's wall,
In a deadly sleep ust aye remain
Till the ruin'd towers down fall.

Each in his hunters garb array'd,
Each holds his bugle horn;
Their keen hounds at their feet are laid,
That ne'er shall wake the morn.

"They become like they behold! Yet immense in strength and power,
In awful pomp and gold, in all the precious unhewn stones of Eden
They build a stupendous Building on the Plain of Salisbury, with chains
Of rocks round London Stone, of Reasonings, of unhewn Demonstrations
In labyrinthine arches (Mighty Urizen the Architect) thro' which
The heavens might revolve and Eternity be bound in their chain.
Labour unparallell'd! a wondrous rocky World of cruel destiny,
Rocks piled on rocks reaching the stars, stretching from pole to pole.
The Building is Natural Religion & its Altars Natural Morality,
A building of eternal death, whose proportions are eternal despair."

David Dimbleby's excellent series <b>A Picture of Britain</b> concludes tomorrow (10 July) at 9pm with, "A journey from Stonehenge in Wiltshire to Cornwall, via Snowdonia in Wales, encompasses the land of Thomas Hardy's tragic love affairs, Dylan Thomas's idiosyncratic poems, the legend of King Arthur and the spectacular mountain paintings of Richard Wilson."*

* Radio Times. 9-15 July, page 68.

....Then up the hill that the Wan Dyke rings
Where the sarsen stones stand grand like kings
..............
Seven Sarsens of granite grim
As he ran them by they looked at him

From "Reynard the Fox"(extract) by John Masefield - early 1920's.

Littlestone, you may have included this in your poetry collection already, but now that the date stone at the entrance to Dean Merewether's 1849 tunnel is visible, it seems a good moment to cite Emmeline Fisher's poem –

"Lines suggested by the opening made in Silbury Hill, 1849"

Bones of our wild forefathers, O forgive,
If we now pierce the chambers of your rest,
And open your dark pillows to the eye
Of the irreverent day! Hark, as we move,
Runs no stern whisper down the narrow vault?
Flickers no shape across our torchlight pale,
With backward beckoning arm? No, all is still...

As Emmeline Fisher predicted, Merewether found bugger all but he did leave a copy of her poem in an urn – where it was found in the sixties by Prof Atkinson when the next tunnel that found bugger-all else was built.
It would be enormously fair and seemly that if ever a third tunnel of exploration is built, entirely obliterating the Merewether and Atkinson tunnels, and the chambers of rest of our wild forefathers are pierced yet again for a futile reason that posterity will condemn for a third time, that someone absolutely insists that the perpetrators take Emmeline's apology back in, where it belongs. May I nominate you for this task?...

Stonehenge, from "A Game of Henge" by Philip Goss

A game of Henge, my masters?
The pieces are set. We lost the box
with instructions years ago.
Do you see Hangman? Or
Clock Patience? Building bricks
the gods grew out of? Dominoes?
It's your move. You're in the ring
of the hills, of the stones, of the walls
of your skull. You want to go?
You want out? Good - that's
the game. Whichever way you turn
are doors. Choose. Step through, so...
And whichever world you stumble into
will be different from all the others, only
what they might have been,
you'll never know.

Have we included probably the best megalithic related poem ever written, or ever likely to be, Shelly's Ozymandias?

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works ye mighty and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

But also, there's possibly the worst megalithic related poem ever written – penned at the same time at the same place!
Apparently, Shelly had a friend called Horace Smith and they had a sonnet-writing session together in 1817 when they decided to each write a sonnet on the same subject. Shelly came up with Ozymandias, whereas Horace…didn't.

(Even the title is so bad it deserves immortality)

"On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below"

by Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
"The King of kings: this mighty city shows
The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

"I've finished mine Percy. What do you think of it?"
"Very nice Horace"
"Have you done one yet Perc?"
"Well, yes, there's this modest little effort...."

Not poetry, but containing some prose that's so good it could be.
And in praise of Shropshire, which makes it instantly true.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=/travel/2005/09/17/etshrop17.xml&sSheet=/travel/2005/09/17/ixtrvhome.html

"Redirect your e-mail..."

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/ramgen.cgi?catalogue=themodernantiquarian&track=indedication

On the subject of mighty works fading with time, an expression of it even neater than Ozymandias -
(Not sure who wrote it)

The sword of Charlemagne
of the mighty thrust,
Is now ferrous oxide,
known as rust.

....or, for the absolute ultimate on that theme:

E=MC2 by Rosser Reeves

Some day, perhaps, some alien eye or eyes,
Blood red in cold and polished horny lids,
Set in a chitinous face
Will sweep the arch of some dark, distant sky
And see a nova flare,
A flick of light, no more.
A pinpoint on a photographic plate,
A foot-note in an alien chart of stars
Forgotten soon on miles of dusty shelves
Where alien beetles feed.
A meal for worms,
Sole epitaph
To mark the curious end of restless man,
Who for a second of galactic time
Floated upon a speck of cosmic dust
Around a minor sun.

More from Blake about Stonehenge and it's builders in Jerusalem` (chapter 3) :

"They become like they behold! Yet immense in strength and power,
In awful pomp and gold, in all the precious unhewn stones of Eden
They build a stupendous Building on the Plain of Salisbury, with chains
Of rocks round London Stone, of Reasonings, of unhewn Demonstrations
In labyrinthine arches (Mighty Urizen the Architect) thro' which
The heavens might revolve and Eternity be bound in their chain.
Labour unparallell'd! a wondrous rocky World of cruel destiny,
Rocks piled on rocks reaching the stars, stretching from pole to pole.
The Building is Natural Religion & its Altars Natural Morality,
A building of eternal death, whose proportions are eternal despair."

And from Thomas Wharton, who clearly didn't know what the hell to make of Stonehenge...

"Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle,
Whether by Merlin's aid, from Scythia's shore
To Amber's fatal plain, Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands the mighty pile,
T'entomb his Britons, slain by Hengist's guile:
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught 'mid thy massy maze their mystic lore:
Or Danish chiefs, enrich'd with savage spoil,
To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine
Rear'd the rude heap; or, in thy hallow'd round
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line;
Or here those kings in solemn state were crown'd:
Studious to trace thy pond'rous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renown'd."

Not strictly a poem

But Rollright Stones by Traffic (Winwood/Capaldi)

'Till I find out, where will I go, where will I go
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know where
The space is between my eyes
Open up the heavenly sky
Death awaits with pearly gates
Those who've been mesmerized
Many years has come and gone
Went to see a standing stone
Some in circles, some alone
Ancient, worn and weather torn
They chill me to my very bone
Many of these can be seen
In quiet places, fields of green
Of hedgerow lanes with countless names
But the only thing that remains are the roll right stones
Space age before my eyes
Opening up the skies
Marches slowly on to the pearly gate
For those who've been mesmerized
Many years has come and gone
But progress marches slowly on
In nature's paint, she hides the stain
'Cos everybody is going insane
The only, the only thing that will sustain are the roll right stones
Went to see an ancient mound
People buried underground
Long ago, will never know
What it was like to hear their sounds
Black crow, I know you've been here
You've see the sights of yesteryear
You steal the grain of the conquered plain
But the only thing that remains are the roll right stones
------------------------------------------------------------------------
F.S. Music Ltd (PRS) & Island Music Ltd. (PRS)
All rights on behalf of F.S. Music Ltd. admin by
Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp (BMI)

This seems to be about an ancient fort at Rathangan in County Kildare. Anyone seen it?

The Fort of Rathangan

The fort over against the oak-wood,
Once it was Bruidge's, it was Cathal's,
It was Aed's, it was Ailill's,
It was Conaing's, it was Cuiline's,
And it was Maelduin's;
The fort remains after each in his turn-
And the kings asleep in the ground.

Anon: translated from the Irish
by Kuno Meyer

Some men are so blinded that they bring
Their offerings to an earth-fast stone,
And eke to trees, and to well springs,
Even as witches teach.
And will not understand
How foolishly they act,
Or how the dead stone or the dumb tree can
Help or give then health,
When they themselves stir not

Sume men synd ablende thaet hi bringath heora lac
to eorrdfaestum stane and eac to treowum
and to wylsprimgum swa swa wiccan taecath
and nellath understandan hu stuntlice hi doth
odde hu se deada stan othe thaet dumbe treow
him maege gehelpan othe haele forgifan
thone hi sylfe ne astyriath of thaere stowe naefre.

Aelfric

Just one of a number of early Christian warnings against the continuing heathen worship of stones, trees and sacred springs. The latter were soon turned into holy wells of course.

"The Stones of Avebury"
... words AND music.
http://www.strum.co.uk/sounds/avebury.htm

(OK, the music might be a bit dubious for most people here, but I quite like it)

Us, soldiers of the stony hearth

Us, soldiers of the stony hearth
Hewing homage to a crowded sky
Hanging heaven onto maiden Earth
Cut stone forever cannot die.

From us, builders, comes forth god
From us, darkness comes forth light
From us all is overawed.
Us, sculptured artists of the night.

Thirteen twelve's, a sacred number
Cut in stone in all we've made
All we've made is torn asunder,
But stone remains, while all will fade.

"Ah, Man! Your stone remains, but NOT forever.
All Rocks. All Man. All dust together."

Donny McIntyre

Soldiers in grey (Anon)

Flanked by the fallen,
Scarred by the wind,
See the soldiers in grey,
Holding the line
That was willed in a world that is gone.

Lost is the reason, gone the control,
Dead are the lords of the stones.
Yet dutiful still, see the soldiers in grey
Holding the line,
Obeying a granite command.

Come Wiccan, come wacko, come Wayne,
Come archaeo, megarak and loon,
See the soldiers in grey, holding the line,
See the power that endures, see the will
Imposed from a world that is gone.

As good as it gets

Wind icy sharp down Waden Hill on winter's eve
blowing east towards stones long lost.
Faulkner's Circle the signpost said
but nothing there now other than a single standing stone
and a twisted pine and more shattered stones
slaughtered and strewn along the way.

We trekked glumly up to the round barrows there above
but such a degree of sadness hung upon every broken fragment
that we stopped halfway and turned
and plodded quietly back to road and waiting car.

Then laughing and gasping up Waden Hill
pausing at a badger's hole where we'd slipped and smiled once before.
And on past a flock of curious sheep (too timid really to be too curious)
into the wind at the top and the welcoming kiss of the long winter sun.

And there below
Silbury!
tucked safely away in its valley and dale.

We stood there a while and smiled
and wondered why Silbury was placed where it was
when it could have been set so much higher up.
But down there is the perfect place for a mystery
(though we don't really know why).

Later...
standing atop West Kennet on the shortest day
when a fingertips' embrace closed the circle of our destinies.
When life's shadows were as long as they were ever going to get
(this time around) and our chance at immortality
was just about as good as it gets.
Smiling... read a Jack Nicholson grin just here.

Then do you know that breathing in the low winter sunlight at that ancient place
that soul-set womb of our ancestors
wrapped all around by the comforting Downlands of Wiltshire.
Hand-in-hand again with one lost so long ago now found again
is where it's at and what it ever was all about.

Anon

Littlest one ;)
Have you heard the words of Robin Williamsons lyrics?
as the harpist and bard of the Incredible String Band he sings about megaliths. myths and standing stones etc
the Five denials on Merlins Grave is a good song as is Finn and the Old Man's house
which he performed with John Renbourne from the band Pentangle, they went under the name 'The Inpenetrable String Tangle'

"Now it's said
and said truly, of the Hero 'Finn McCaul',
that if one day goes by without his name being mentioned then the
world will come to an end, so judgeing by the way things are going its
a good job I mentioned his name to you tonight.
Finn was a great hero altogether and it was said of Finn McCaul's
generousity that his house was the strangers home and if the leaves of
the forest of the world were red gold and the waters of the world
white silver Finn would have given them all away.

Well Finn was hunting once, he was very fond of hunting, why wouldn't
he love it his own nephews were hunting dogs under enchantment, boys
under enchanment as hounds you know, the greatest hunting dogs in the
world they were and their names were Bran and Skillan but its not the
story of Bran and Skillan I'm telling you tonight (But I do know it.)

Finn was out hunting one time and he had with him one of his greatest
friends, a man by the name of Connan Maoul, now that means Connan the
Bald, they called him Connan the bold because he had no hair on his
head but he had that much hair on his back and his legs and his arms
that they used to shave him once a week and all the stockings and
gloves that Finn or any of the hero's that Finn had with him ever wore
were made out of the hair of Connan Maoul.

You'd have heared of Connan the Barbarian likely? That was named after
this Connan by an old traditional idea called a rip off!
Connan Moaul.

He never saw an open door that he thought his duty to walk through it,
he never saw a man frown and he thought his duty to strike him,
but it's not the story of Connan that I'm telling you tonight.

Finn had him with him this time also another great hero named 'Germot
of the love spot' and Germot had a mark on his face and he had to keep
that mark covered with his hat for if any woman saw it she'd fall
passionatly in love with him and he was one of the greatest hunters in
the world but he'd never hunt the wild boar but it's not the story of
Germot that I'm telling you...

(see pt2)

Two Visits to the Men-an-Tol, West Penwith, Cornwall

Ishmael's Shaft, Hard Shaft and Robin's Shaft,
long disused now, mere falls of shadow and air
into tunnelled earth, wickered-over with keep-out lids,

but the abandoned engine houses around Bodrifty
and Little Galver glitter charmed lives in holiday sun
under a clear wildblue sky as we approach

the stones moored in the moorland;
years ago, on our first visit, mist looms
wove and unwove luminous chilly muslins of fog

over the gorseland
out of which the three stones suddenly blossomed,
two waist-high pillars, to east and west,

and between them,
forever motionlessly circling,
a holed stone big enough for anyone to look out or in,

holy stone and her two sentinel sisters.
(Who said at night they run to the river and drink,
or dance across the brazen moor,

hopping over the laid-stone hedges?)
Twenty years ago I clambered through the maw
of the mother stone, entering, travelling, exiting

three times,
the rabbit-mown grass scratchy on my knees
as I crawled through, against the clouded sun

through this granite polo-mint mother,
or giantess-bracelet of stone,
cervix-anchor steadying me in a sea of mist and gorse,

the mass of her cold and rough to my touch,
like a fallen moon, stone ball of string,
ravelling and unravelling in stillness -

winding thousands of years of healing,
fertility and divination invisibly around herself
and her attendant pillars -

I threaded myself through the pierced stone,
my child within me not to be born for seven months yet;
fertile I was, blessing for the child I sought,

safe passage -
for first comes blossom, then bud, then fruit -
hoicked up into the world via meticulous hospital panics,

she arrived unharmed; and years later, at noon,
at the hot height of May, the coconut scent of the gorse
outfragrancing the salt of the sea,

drifting the yachts along in perfumed gales,
my daughter plunge-wriggles, coquettes and corkscrews
herself through the granite 0,

the ever-open place's massive orbit:
now it is she who will carry the cornucopia,
roped in her turn to earth and the spring.

Penelope Shuttle*

* Thanks to Andy Norfolk on the Stones List for posting this poem and also the following -

"Penelope Shuttle was Peter Redgrove's partner and they wrote a couple of books together, e.g. The Wise Wound."

Submitted because it has a very satisfying touch of McGonagall about it! ....

Stonehenge Thoughts by Denis Cannings

Oh! Silent stones, in circle round -
Your shadows cast upon the ground,
What mysteries you hold, within your heart,
What tales of days gone by, could you impart.

Awesome and majestic, you stand so upright -
A place of deep feeling on a silent night,
A place of dread, midst your circle there-in,
So quiet, so still, only the movement of night's vermin.

As I stand alone, neath your moon-made shade-
I seem to hear voices chanting, yet I am not afraid -
For it seems to be in place, here 'mongst shadows,
The chanting coming louder, echoing from the old barrows.

The silence falls once more, and all is still,
The wind softly moaning, through these stones on the hill,
I look around me, with a wonder in my heart,
How long is your history, and when did it start?

So many tales have been told, of your days.
Folk-lore has been written, in many changing ways,
But only you, stones of silence, grace and bliss-
Can put a true answer, to tales such as this.

Thanks to the Wissers (Stones List) for this one -

Solus (Light)

Along the snowy banks
Of winter river's course
There runs a stream of winter light
That travels past the source
The autumn days will slowly pass
The solstice on its way
The ancient suns of yesteryear
Still shining to the last
We sing into caves of stone
Where chieftains lie at rest
Following the fairy mounds
Mindful of the quest
That takes us into lighter times
And tides us over dark
Awakening the snowy dreams
As winter finds its mark

Lyrics by Triona Ni Dhomhnaill

Bridestones by Ted Hughes (Remains of Elmet)

Scorched-looking, unhewn - a hill-top chapel,
Actually a crown of outcrop rock -
Earth's heart-bone laid bare.

Crowding congregation of skies.
Tense congregation of hills.
You do nothing casual here.

The wedding stones
Are electrified with whispers.

And marriage is nailed down
By this slender-necked, heavy headed
Black exclamation mark
of rock.

And you go
With the wreath of the weather
The wreath of the horizons
The wreath of constellations
Over your shoulders.

And from now on
The sun
Can always touch your ghost
With the shadow of this finger.

From now on
The moon can always lift your skull
On to this perch, to clean it.

p.s.Hughes say that Elmet was the last Celtic kingdom of England, and covers West Yorkshire, and perhaps the vale of York. His words, as always, are like ice piercing through to the essence of what he is writing about, be it rock, salmon, hawk or river....

Though the days grow shorter the turn of the world falls mid-week. A little light relief then at http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/ and a Happy 'Newness' to one and all :-)

This has got to be the one subject that hasn't been trolled to death and has stayed the course this year!
Lets see more threads like this in 2006 eh? ;)

.... and a very Happy New Year to you, Littlestone.

I'm sure you've come across it before but I thought you may like to have this painting in your megalithic collection.

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/f/friedric/1/102fried.html

akemashiteomedetougozaimasu (I think!?!) :-)

<b>Stonehenge</b>, from <b>A Game of Henge<b/> by Philip Goss, is now up on Meg Poems at http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/ with an accompanying illustration from <b>Milton<b/> by William Blake. Thanks to Nigel for drawing my attention to the former.

photobabe, may I have your permission to use your illustration 'Forever watchful... The keepers of The Stones' to illustrate a poem by Donny McIntyre on Megalithic Poems? The poem is a is follows -

<b>Us, soldiers of the stony hearth</b>

Us, soldiers of the stony hearth
Hewing homage to a crowded sky
Hanging heaven onto maiden Earth
Cut stone forever cannot die.

From us, builders, comes forth god
From us, darkness comes forth light
From us all is overawed.
Us, sculptured artists of the night.

Thirteen twelve's, a sacred number
Cut in stone in all we've made
All we've made is torn asunder,
But stone remains, while all will fade.

"Ah, Man! Your stone remains, but NOT forever.
All Rocks. All Man. All dust together."

Donny McIntyre

Came across another Paul Nash painting of "Megaliths in the landscape", it had Avebury stones, Silbury and a hillfort, with a large sun. In the foreground he had painted a small shrub with a snakelike stick centred on the sun - its in the Albright Museum USA....
Not sure what the symbolic repesentation means, know he was a war artist and his starkness partly represents the terrible things he saw but its an intriguing painting - my illustration is black and white, the original was painted in soft shades of yellow, an optimistic colour..

I just came across a poem by this Irish poet. It's called "Badger". You might like it. =;o)

All this talk about Stonehenge is doin' me head in; even William Blake went mad with despair over it -

A building of eternal death, whose proportions are eternal despair :-(

A little light relief then while we get ourselves focused (and don't shoot me for what follows - I'm just the messenger :-)

Julian Cope Is Dead

Julian Cope is dead,
I shot him in the head.
If he moves some more,
I'll kill him for sure.
Now, Julian Cope is dead.

The Teardrops weren't they great?
In their own wee way.
'Treason', 'Reward', 'The Thief Of Baghdad's,
The Teardrops weren't they great?

A footnotes all they'd have got,
In the annals of rock.
Until I got wise,
And hatched up my plan,
A footnotes all they'd have got.

Jules C. just follow me,
I have your interests at heart.
Now take this knife,
And write to your wife.
Tell her it had to be.
Now Julian said no,
He didn't want to go.
More records he wanted to make.
But if ?pitch? is your man,
You'll go with a bang,
Bigger than the Beatles for sure.

Now, Julian Cope is dead,
I shot him in the head,
He didn't understand,
The glory of the plan,
Now, Julian Cope is dead.

We'll have platinum records not gold,
To hang on our walls at home.
When the neighbours come round,
I'll always break down,
Repeating the stories of old.

But who is this man,
With holes in his hands,
A halo round his head.
That Arab smock,
And golden locks,
It can't be, it could be, it is!
J.C. please, you've got to see,
I was doing what a manager ought.
The records weren't selling,
And Balfie was drooping,
And Gary had a mortgage to pay.

From the LP "The Man" by Bill Drummond

Megalithic Poems..hmmm lots of replies there..

I think it's anoraks for everyone in the audience

This one is from a friend of mine:

THE HENGE STONES

Atte nyte

They walke

Ye did not noe

That they could goe

They talke

And nod theyr Grizl'd Heads

Leave theyr Mossie Beds

To whisper antient Lore

While the Moone flees from the Shore

And Darknesse reigns as afore.

They maun't be seene

By Mortal Eie

'Tis Death to spie

But when the Sunne

Hath his Race begun

They Silent fale

Stand stille and tall

Agaynst the Skie

None noweth why

Their Secrets they doe keepe

When we waxe wide awake

They

Slepe.

[Barbara Tomlinson 2005]

(No relation to Jane I think)

"If I had my life to live over I'd like to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after the other, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way until the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies."

Nadine Stair

(Sorry, completely OT - just felt the need to say it somehow, must be the smell of spring in the air :-)

Small and fleeting, hidden away down leafy lanes, poetry was spoken to a few rather than many, or it starred briefly in a crowd before moving on. But I like to think some of it will linger. A lot of poetry books left the shelves and I imagine the poems now, still flying around someone between Norton Malreward and Chew Magna, going at dusk up Gibbet Lane and crossing Pagan Hill to find the stones at Stanton Drew. Words pattering like rain in the leaves.

Rose Flint

http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/places/mob1.htm#Top

JC's poem, In dedication. From the hunter, is now up on -

http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/2006/05/in-dedication-from-hunter.html

Hope you like the illustration that accompanies it (it's not easy to find an illustration with something resembling a gusset in it ;-)

Littlestone, this thread is getting longer than a lizard's tail.
Would a second one be good, like the Stone Shifting threads?
(If so, maybe headings comprising the author or title? I hesitate to add stuff in case its a repeat).

The Monument Commonly Called Long Meg and Her Daughters, Near the River Eden

A weight of awe, not easy to be borne,
Fell suddenly upon my Spirit -- cast
From the dread bosom of the unknown past,
When first I saw that family forlorn.
Speak Thou, whose massy strength and stature scorn
The power of years -- pre-eminent, and placed
Apart, to overlook the circle vast --
Speak, Giant-mother! tell it to the Morn
While she dispels the cumbrous shades of Night;
Let the Moon hear, emerging from a cloud;
At whose behest uprose on British ground
That Sisterhood, in hieroglyphic round
Forth-shadowing, some have deemed, the infinite
The inviolable God, that tames the proud!

William Wordsworth

Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgement-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into their mounds,

The glebe-cow drooled. Till God called, `No;
It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

`All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you that are helpless in such matters.

`That this is not the judgement-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening...

`Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).'

So down we lay again. `I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,'
Said one, `than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!'

And many a skeleton shook his head.
`Instead of preaching forty year,'
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
`I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.'

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

As the sun, so shy, speeds on to hide behind the western hills
I stand within this
Ancient circle with its rugged stones
Pointing to the sky
Like the digits on the clock of time -
The time that has refused to move,
As if the keeper of this heather hearth has gone to bed
Remembering not to lift
The fallen weights of Time and Space.

And as I rest upon this stone
I see a ladder too - like Jacob did
Reaching far into the end of Time, and
I seem to touch that void where there was only
Love
That brooded on the great abyss
Giving birth to
Life. And as the painful pangs of birth subside
I hear in the wind a mighty voice commanding through eternal space,
"Let there be Light", and
Light there Was.
The Light was good,
And it kissed the earth, they fell in love
And made a promise to be true for ever and for Ever.

They're still in love, for
As I rest upon this stone tonight I spy them kissing in their
Purple gowns
As touch they do on that horizon bed
Where they'll embrace 'till dawn

I know they will not part
For as tomorrow comes they'll wake, and walk together through
another day,
While all the children of the living earth
Will call them blessed as they pass.

And as I touch this stone
I feel the hands of those
My brothers
Who at dawn of human life
Erected to that same Old Sun
This temple of eternal praise, and thanked the
Source of Light and Love for just
Another day - to be alive.

And now I hear in the stillness of this hill,
Where there's no time,
The voice of him who said,
"Let there be Light"
And light there was,
There is,
And will be tomorrow for my sons,
And their children too.

Iolo Morgannwg (1747-1826)

More about this colourful character at - http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Iolo%20Morgannwg

High on a mountain's highest ridge,
Where oft the stormy winter gale
Cuts like a scythe, while through the clouds
It sweeps from vale to vale;
Not five yards from the mountain-path,
This thorn you on your left espy;
And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry;
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.

And close beside this aged thorn,
There is a fresh and lovely sight,
A beauteous heap, a hill of moss,
Just half a foot in height.
All lovely colours there you see,
All colours that were ever seen,
And mossy network too is there,
As if by hand of lady fair
The work had woven been,
And cups, the darlings of the eye,
So deep is their vermilion dye.

Ah me! what lovely tints are there!
Of olive-green and scarlet bright,
In spikes, in branches, and in stars,
Green, red, and pearly white.
This heap of earth o'ergrown with moss,
Which close beside the thorn you see,
So fresh in all its beauteous dyes,
Is like an infant's grave in size
As like as like can be:
But never, never any where,
An infant's grave was half so fair.*

William Wordsworth

Compare this with Stukeley's, "...findings at several sites, as recorded in Stonehenge, a Temple Restor’d to the British Druids: “About three foot below the surface, a layer of flints... about a foot thick, rested on a layer of soft mould another foot: in which was inclos’ed an urn full of bones... The bones had been burnt, and crouded all together in a little heap, not so much as a hat would contain... We made a cross-section ten foot each way, three foot broad over its center... At length we found a squarish hole cut into the solid chalk, in the center of the tumulus. It was three foot and a half, i.e., two cubits long, and near two foot broad, i.e. one cubit: pointing to Stonehenge directly. It was a cubit and a half deep from the surface... Regarding “one of the small ones, 20 cubits in diameter,”... A child’s body (as it seems) had been burnt here, and cover’d up in that hole: but thro’ the length of time consum’d. From three foot deep, we found much wood ashes soft and black as ink...""

"...there is no evidence as to when Wordsworth first read Stukeley, or that Wordsworth himself subscribed to Stukeley’s fatuous theories, we know from poems like “Salisbury Plain” that he was fascinated by Druid lore, and in the 1805 version of The Prelude he even characterized himself, during his studies at Cambridge (Stukeley’s alma mater), as a youthful initiate into the Druid class of Bards..."**

* From The Thorn by William Wordsworth. Complete poem at - http://theliterarylink.com/thorn.html
** Abstracts from, From Relics to Remains: Wordsworth’s “The Thorn” and the Emergence of Secular History by Charles J. Rzepka. More at - http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2003/v/n31/008696ar.html

Some rather nice musings at Avebury ....

Very like children they must have been. The same unending days. They must have thought that the world went on for ever- just as they knew it--like my damned Committee does. . . . With their fuel wasting away and the climate changing imperceptibly, century by century. . . . Kings and important men followed one another here for centuries and centuries. . . . They had lost their past and had no idea of any future. . . . They had forgotten how they came into the land . . . When I was a child I believed that my father's garden had been there for ever. . . .
"This is very like trying to remember some game one played when one was a child. It is like coming on something that one built up with bricks and stones in some forgotten part of the garden. . . . "
"The life we lived here," said the doctor, has left its traces in traditions, in mental predispositions, in still unanalyzed fundamental ideas."
"Archaeology is very like remembering," said Sir Richmond. "Presently we shall remember a lot more about all this. We shall remember what it was like to live in this place, and the long journey hither, age by age out of the south. We shall remember the sacrifices we made and the crazy reasons why we made them. We sowed our corn in blood here. We had strange fancies about the stars. Those we brought with us out of the south where the stars are brighter. And what like were those wooden gods of ours? I don't remember. . . . But I could easily persuade myself that I had been here before."
They stood on the crest of the ancient wall and the setting sun cast long shadows of them athwart a field of springing wheat.
"Perhaps we shall come here again," the doctor carried on Sir Richmond's fancy; "after another four thousand years or so, with different names and fuller minds. And then I suppose that this ditch won't be the riddle it is now."
"Life didn't seem so complicated then," Sir Richmond mused. "Our muddles were unconscious. We drifted from mood to mood and forgot. There was more sunshine then, more laughter perhaps, and blacker despair. Despair like the despair of children that can weep itself to sleep. . . . It's over. . . . Was it battle and massacre that ended that long afternoon here? Or did the woods catch fire some exceptionally dry summer, leaving black hills and famine? Or did strange men bring a sickness--measles, perhaps, or the black death? Or was it cattle pest? Or did we just waste our woods and dwindle away before the new peoples that came into the land across the southern sea? I can't remember. . . . "
Sir Richmond turned about. "I would like to dig up the bottom of this ditch here foot by foot--and dry the stuff and sift it--very carefully. . . . Then I might begin to remember things."

http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/secret-places-of-the-heart/5/

This was posted by TomBo a couple of years ago* (and maybe written by him). It's unsigned but so friggin' good it deserves to be reposted.

Today on Fendrith Hill
I would speak words as stark as bones
From here amongst the wind worn stones

But whose words could be as stark as the sky?
Or as wise as these stones? -
Toppled by time, rugged, alone

Today on Fendrith Hill
I would sing you a song as endless as the wind
It would rattle your windows at night
And shriek like the naked storm

But whose voice could haunt like the voice of the sky
As it sighs around these stones?
Forgotten, unheard it moans

Today on Fendrith Hill
The wind whispers a truth as old as the Earth
Unutterable simplicity
Spare and lean as a hare
Honed down by the blasting wind
To the barest of bones

* http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3657

It's coming up to full moon (and a low one) maybe that's why people are squabbling again :-) Take a look at Cairns, and the beautiful pic to accompany it by CianMcLiam at -

http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/

Then take the hand of your loved one, go out and breathe in the magic of it all - neither you nor it will be there forever :-)

She just came sailing by
brightest lady of the southern sky.
I can't help thinking it's all too orderly
all too
engineered.

A bright light for an otherwise darkened
sky
and almost the same size as the sun from here.

So much so that she does
eclipse it
almost perfectly
now and then.

And in a celestial game of hide and seek
she moves amongst our ancient stones
so cleverly positioned to capture her trajectory.

There is a lovely
mysterious symmetry here
that neither diminishes nor relinquishes
her claim to wonder.

And in the end
when soul seeks solace
and a newer place to dwell
I will remember that lady bright and full.

As a light to guide me home again
cloud whispered and sailing
to that place
of silvered silence.

Silverfox

(Stop whatever you're doing, go outside and look at the moon :-)

Have you got this one:

By the cromleach sloping downwards,
Where the druid's victim bled;
By the raised stone pointing upwards,
Heitolyphics none have read.
In their mystic symbols seeking
Of past creeds and rites o'erthrown,
If the truths they shrined are speaking
Yet, in litanies of stone

I think this is a bit more of it:

Oh! Shrine him 'neath the cromleach
Armed and ready for the foe,
As an emblem that not death
His defiance can lay low.

It has something to do with "The Flagstone of MacKinley". A bit of folklore from the Carlinford Lough area.

Found in Legendary Stories - The Carlingford Lough District by Michael George Crawford (1913)

........hop this one hasn't made it up here yet, tis one bleddy long thread, tis !

THE MERRY MAIDENS

Near St. Buryan can be found
Nineteen stones. Two pillars
Of granite flank themon the ground
Like a pair of gaolers.

One sabbath evenineteen young maids
Instead of going to pray
Strayed into a field's furtive shades
Hearing two pipers play.

Despite the day the maids did dance
Faster and faster still
And whirled into a senseless trance
Caused by those men of ill.

Lightning out of the cloudless air
Unfleshed their tender bones
And turned them and the evil pair
Into a group of stones.

-- RONALD BOTTRALL 1906 - 1989
(from "The Dreamt Sea: an Anthology of Anglo-Cornish Poetry 1928-2004, Francis Boutle Press)

FIONA COLLIGAN-YANO (1964-)

BODMIN MOOR

On Bodmin Moor
Broken tooth standing stones
Show where leylines
Perforate the earth.

Along the tear
Sweetfaced ponies
Masked by mud,
Follow paths between
Shaft, Circle, Tor and Sky.

And Dozemary Pool,
Essential blackness,
Lies at the bottom
of a sheer rock shute.

Where,
On a concrete island,
A sheepskin,
Daubed with covering woad,
Is stretched in sacrifice -

An Inverse pupil
Sunken in the Moor’s dark eye.

ARTHUR CADDICK (1911- 1987)

AT LANYON QUOIT

Look not softly,
Stranger, upon this Stone Age scene,
Nor let remoteness
Disguise where living men have been
In grief and laughter.
Though all’s now hushed and gaunt and harsh,
You are standing where humanity once stood.
These stones seal a sepulchre
For your own flesh and blood.

Here lie our forebears,
Though their memorials have no name.
How should we know them,
If from the grave these tribesmen came?
What was their language?
No echo in the southwest wind
Recalls one word one single warrior said.
Ravaged granite stays to mark
The lost unlettered dead.

Here lie their women,
Short-lived mothers of chance-reared young.
The artless lullabies
This Cornish hillside once heard sung,
Their mourners’ dirges,
Are as soundless to this world’s ears
As to the deaf that skylark’s note above.
Cold silence grips their converse
And all their songs of love.

....a personal fave this, love the language. Powerful.

D. M. THOMAS (1935-)

NINEMAIDENS

Our sorrow and our joy
Dance with us.
Ninemaidens
We are unaccountable.

Dace with us
The Sabbath-dances.
We are unaccountable
For this summer lightning.

The Sabbath dances
Astonished,
For this summer lightning is love.

Astonished
Our hearts thunder.
Is love
Anything but yes?

Our heats thunder
Wiith desire for you.
Anything but yes
And we should die.

With desire for you
We are struck dumb.
And we should die
In your arms.

We are struck dumb,
Having too many words.
In your arms
Stone is beautiful.

We open to you.

We close into a circle,
Ninemaidens.
We open to you
Our sorrow and our joy.

The mound in question is on Porth Island, just north of Newquay.
NB....has this an entry in the gazeteer???

FIONA COLLIGAN-YANO (1964-)

THE BURIAL MOUND

In my mind, the glowing hump
Becomes illuminated by angry rays
Striking off the stone grey sea.

And for a moment
The discordant gulls
Weave as one with the receding day.

Voices of the long dead
Sweep upwards from the desecrated grave,
To keen with the flowing wind.

And, as eyelids flutter,
People gather in the gloom
And the gestalt sings awhile,
Despite times menstruum.

I don't think we have anything from the Bard in all this long list do we?
I can't find anything specifically Megalithic, but there's this- one of the sonnets, about non-reporting detectorists.

Of what coarse metal ye are moulded.

Degenerate and base art thou,
An infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker,
The owner of no one good quality.

You speak an infinite deal of nothing
Whilst swallowing the treasure of the realm

Pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell!
Thou art baser than a cutpurse.
Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes.

This poem, by Irish poet Austin Clarke, is possibly my favourite poem. It's a liberal translation of an old gaelic song 'Lon Doire an Cairn', which loosely means 'Blackbird of the Cairn in the Grove' and in it the blackbird mourns the loss of the joyful and untamed pagan Ireland to the church of St. Patrick; the wild earth and the power of the sun forgotten and replaced by sombre, regimented prayer in dark cells. Seemed pretty subversive to me as a 'young fella' at a Christian Brothers School and possibly opened my eyes to enlightenment!

The original song contains the verse:
Doire an Chairn* is the wood back there
where the Fianna took their rest
So fine and fair its trees
they set the blackbird there

*Cairn of the Grove

It would be fascinating to find out which cairn the warriors of the Fianna took their rest in the old folklore!

Anyway, enjoy the poem and bathe your senses in the wonderful imagery :)

The Blackbird of Derrycairn

Stop, stop and listen for the bough top
Is whistling and the sun is brighter
Than God's own shadow in the cup now!
Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins
Will sound, Patric, as well at nightfall.

Faintly through mist of broken water
Fionn heard my melody in Norway.
He found the forest track, he brought back
This beak to gild the branch and tell, there,
Why men must welcome in the daylight.

He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,
The shouts of gillies in the morning
When packs are counted and the swans cloud
Loch Erne, but more than all those voices
My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.

In little cells behind a cashel,
Patric, no handbell gives a glad sound.
But knowledge is found among the branches.
Listen! That song that shakes my feathers
Will thong the leather of your satchels.

Austin Clarke

A poem about Wittenham Clumps (also brilliantly known as the Berkshire Bubs and Mother Dunch’s Buttocks) written in 1844 on a beech tree there… (See also TMA postings about this).

As up the hill with labr'ing steps we tread
Where the twin Clumps their sheltering branches spread
The summit's gain'd at ease reclining lay
and all around the wide spread scene survey
Point out each object and instructive tell
The various changes that the land befel.
Where the low bank the country wide surrounds
That ancient earthwork form'd old Murcias bounds.
In misty distance see the barrow heave
there lies forgotten lonely Culchelms grave.
Around this hill the ruthless Danes intrenched
and these fair plains with gory slaughter drench'd
While at our feet where stands that stately tower
In days gone by uprose the Roman power
And yonder, there where Thames smooth waters glide
In later days appeared monastic pride.
Within that field where lies the grazing herd
Huge wall were found, some coffins disinter'd
Such is the course of time, the wreck which fate
And awful doom award the earthly great.

Images – Paul Nash painted the Clumps a lot, especially the trees on top, but most aren’t much cop. This one on the other hand is great (IMO) http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collections/artist_search.php?objectId=724

Duddo Stones

Stone hands
Raised in the air;
A perpetual motion.

Ploughed lands
Will share the affair,
With a yearly reunion

John Owen Smith, 1991

Did flint tools or alone the driving rain
complete its holy paradox: granitic
yet sensitive as a bone?

Nine maidens petrified for sabbath dancing
or sun-discs crouched in an altar-less ring
in a misty field the sea's whetstone hones
to a sharp blade;the sun tests it, aslant.

On the humped moor's spine,consumptive mineres
turned aside from their plod home to crouch and pass
through the men-an-tol, the ring of granite.

I am the loganstone a cloud can alter,
inert mass trembling on a compass point;
Iam the men-an-tol, the wind's vagina;
I am the circle of stones grouped around grass.

See to the north, the south.
At the moor's crown
Thin Field, hard- won, turns on
The Puzzle of Stones.
Lying in dreamtime here
Knees dragged to chin,
With dagger, food and drink -
Who was that one?
None shall know, says bully blackbird.
None.

Field threaded with flowers
Cols in lost sun.
Under furze bank, yarrow
Sinks the drowned mine.
By spoil dump and bothy
Down the moor spine
Hear long-vanished voices
Falling again.
Now they are all gone, says bully blackbird.
All gone.

Hedgebirds loose on wild air
Their dole of song.
From churchtown the tractor
Stammers, is dumb.
In the wilderness house
Of granite, thorn,
Ask where are those who came.
Ask why we come.
Home, says bully blackbird,
Where is home?

(NB: In the original the blackbird's refrain is rendered in italics)
Chris

It's been suggested elsewhere* that this thread is a place for wittering and one dimensional love-ins. I'm sad that the person who made those comments thinks as he does because it seems a great injustice to the many people who have contributed to Megalithic Poems over a period of one and a half years (and who I believe have both given to, and taken from, the thread some pleasure). It is an even greater injustice, of course, to the poets themselves - poets of the stature of Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, as well as lesser poets, who have put pen to paper on a theme so dear to our hearts.

The Past:

Megalithic Poems didn't actually start on TMA, it started on the Stones Mailing List a couple of years ago under the banner of Megalithic Poetry. I can't remember now where the idea came from or what the first poem was, but someone remarked back then that there probably wouldn't be many poems out there on a megalithic theme to collate - I tended to think likewise. We were both proved wrong. What has really surprised me is just how many poems there are about megaliths, the range of feelings they encompass and the time-span they cover.

The Present:

I don't own this thread, it is the offspring of all who have contributed to it, and as far as I know it is unique. If anyone owns it TMA does, and they can pull the plug on it anytime. If I could edit it I would, and the first thing I'd do would be to provide sub-headings so poems and poets could be found more easily. I tend not to comment too much on a poem someone sends in because, to be honest, I'm not qualified to do so. I always try to thank people who do contribute, however, and where possible encourage budding poets to continue writing.

The Future:

When Megalithic Poems first started on the Stones List I said something along the lines that if there was enough material out there it might one day lead to a book. I also made it clear that if a book did materialise I wasn't in it for personal reward and anything that the book did make would go towards a worthy heritage cause. At that time I didn't know about blogs so when I set up the Megalithic Poems blog it was an opportunity to experiment with illustrations to accompany the poems (a good many of those illustrations come from people who contribute to TMA and I'm constantly amazed by the generosity of those people in allowing their illustrations to be used). In other words, the blog is halfway between this thread and a book. Every time I think right, now is the time to get things going on the book, someone pops up with even more poems (thanks chris s, for your latest contributions) and I decide to let things run for a while longer. There are three other people who have expressed an interest in collaborating on producing a book on Megalithic Poems and when contributions finally do dry up I'll be calling on them to help out with pulling everything together - there's a lot of checking and editing to be done ;-) Meanwhile, I hope the TMA eds will allow this thread to run for a while longer and thank them for their patience so far.

LS

* http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/forum/?thread=36634&message=449054
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/forum/?thread=36634&message=449075

Can we try something a bit different this time? Please keep the thread on-topic. Please don't be goaded into replying to unpleasantness. Please just keep posting about poems on a megalithic theme.

Thanks.

She lay there midst

Mammoth, reindeer, and wolf bones;

Diadem of fox teeth round her brow

Ocher under her hips

26,640 plus or minus 110 years before "now".

Burnt reindeer-pelvis bone bits
in her mouth,

Bones of two men lying by her side,
one each side.

Gary Snyder - Taken from Mountains and Rivers Without End

p.s.Could'nt fit Snyder's name into topic title - only allowed certain number of letters.

Who possesses this landscape?

The man who bought it or

the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning

with a deer on his back?

Who possesses this landscape?

the man who bought it or

I who am possessed by it?

False questions, for

this landscape is masterless

and intractable in any terms

that are human.”

Something to do with time has all to do
With shape and size. The million shapes of time,
Its millions of appearances are the true
Mountain and moor and tingling water drop
That runs and hangs and shakes time towards a stop.

This and his other poem have been carved into blocks of stone at Knockan Crag.
http://www.knockan-crag.co.uk/art.asp

We went to see Nick Harper (son of Roy, if you're interested) play at a gig last night and while he was changing a string he said: 'I'll have to do the poem', and proceeded to recite a wonderful and quite long poem. It featured words about sarsens and barrows and stuff. he didn't say what the poem was or who it was by. It's a long shot, I know, but anyone here know? Moth said he thought it might have been posted here, but please forgive me not wading through this thread which is really impressively long now...
J
xx

This reminds me particularly of the King Stone at the Rollrights. From Act 3 Scene 4, on seeing Banquo's ghost:

"It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood. What is the night?"

Henry James on Stonehenge, it was probably written round about 1870 and appears in a book entitled “English Hours” Its a good piece of prose by an American writer, and given Stonehenge has just been damned by an American magazine, fitting that it should appear.. " a heart stirring picture in a land of pictures" sadly roads today
;( and not a place for sitting by and watching the shadows shorten and lengthen....

..Stonehenge is rather a hackneyed shrine of pilgrimage. At the time of my former visit a picnic party was making libations of beer on the dreadful altar sites. But the mighty mystery of the place has not yet been stared out of countenance; and on this occasion there were no picnickers we were left to drink deep of all its ambiguities and intensities. It stands as lonely in history as it does on the great plain whose many tinted green waves, as they roll away from it, seem to symbolise the ebb of the long centuries which have left it so portentously unexplained. You may put a hundred questions to these rough hewn giants as they bend in grim contemplation of their fallen companions; but your curiosity falls dead in the vast sunny stillness that enshrouds them, and the strange monument, with all its unspoken memories, becomes simply a heart stirring picture in a land of pictures. It is indeed immensely vague and immensely deep. At a distance you see it standing in a shallow den of the plain, looking hardly larger than a group of ten-pins on a bowling green. I can fancy sitting all a summer’s day watching its shadows shorten and lengthen again, and drawing a delicious contrast between the world’s duration and the feeble span of individual experience.
There is something in Stonehenge almost reassuring to the nerves; if you are disposed to feel that the life of man has rather a thin surface, and that we may soon get to the bottom of things, the immemorial grey pillars may serve to represent for you the pathless vaults beneath the house of history…

From Wildlife in a Southern Country (1879)
Sounds like the Ridgeway was green and we've lost something.
Bugger.

A broad green track runs for many a long, long mile across the downs, now following the ridges, now winding past at the foot of a grassy slope, then stretching away through a cornfield and fallow. It is distinct from the wagon-tracks which cross it here and there, for these are local only, and, if traced up, land the wayfarer presently in a maze of fields, or end abruptly in the rickyard of a lone farmhouse. It is distinct from the hard roads of modern construction which also at wide intervals cross its course, dusty and glaringly white in the sunshine ….. With varying width, from twenty to fifty yards, it runs like a green ribbon … a width that allows a flock of sheep to travel easily side by side.

Did we get this one?
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/4581

In his his biography of Richard Jefferies (1909) -

The Downs in this immediate country of Richard Jeffries are among the highest, most spacious, and most divinely carved in rolling ridge and hollowed flank, and their summits commune with the finest summits of the more southerly downs - Inkpen, Martinsell, Tan Hill … Jeffries often thought of the sea upon these hills. The eye expects it. There is something oceanic in their magnitude, their solitude … They are never abrupt, but, flowing on and on, make a type of infinity … they have a hugeness of undivided surface for which there is no comparison on earth.

The Stones

This is the city where men are mended.
I lie on a great anvil.
The flat blue sky-circle

Flew off like the hat of a doll
When I fell out of the light. I entered
The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.

The mother of pestles diminished me.
I became a still pebble.
The stones of the belly were peaceable,

The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
Only the mouth-hole piped out,
Importunate cricket

In a quarry of silences.
The people of the city heard it.
They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate,

The mouth-hole crying their locations.
Drunk as a foetus
I suck at the paps of darkness.

The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away.
The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
Open one stone eye.

This is the after-hell: I see the light.
A wind unstoppers the chamber
Of the ear, old worrier.

Water mollifies the flint lip,
And daylight lays its sameness on the wall.
The grafters are cheerful,

Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers.
A current agitates the wires
Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures.

A workman walks by carrying a pink torso.
The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.

My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber.
Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
On Fridays the little children come

To trade their hooks for hands.
Dead men leave eyes for others.
Love is the uniform of my bald nurse.

Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.
The vase, reconstructed, houses
The elusive rose.

Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows.
My mendings itch. There is nothing to do.
I shall be good as new.

Sylvia Plath

"The testimony of Sue Clifford engages the jury with what the figure means to individuals and to local people. She begins her statement by expressing why the giant is so important to her personally and to the people of the town. She talks about the persistence of the giant and how he characterises the town as the ‘Giants domain’... Three poets, James Turner, Sandra Tappenden and Jan Farquharson, all of whom have contributed one poem to the chapter (are introduced)."

* The Cerne Giant: An Antiquity on Trial by T. Darvill, K. Barker, B. Bender and R. Hutton. Oxbow Books. 1999. 172 pages, 19 photographs, 3 maps, 32 text figures/illustrations. ISBN 1-900188-94-5. Review of the book here -

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prehistoric/reviews/03_06_cerne.htm

Apologies, off topic I'm afraid, but the following may be of interest. Ian McKellen will be reading Simon Armitage's rendering into modern English of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on Thursday, 21 December. "The core of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight... embraces many elements central to Celtic mythology, the most prominent being the "severed head" theme..."*

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Gawain_and_the_Green_Knight

Rites from A Day at the Earth House

In the church of St James, at his post
on the font a priest with no face holds two smooth-
coiled snakes at bay. The two stone avenues
coil up over the hill to the henge. Out of sight

the organ tunes up for a wedding and, white
ribbons shivering, a sit-up-and-beg

white Morris takes a road marked red
on the map, that cuts the henge. A sideways

glance: the bride in the back looks, let's say
carsick, as they slow to thread between

great stones. The dancers on the green
wag their hankies like aunts on the end

of the platform of centuries: Morris men
in white laundered blouses slashed -

cross their hearts - with these sashes
of blood red, like barber's poles.

Philip Gross

"That intense but ambivalent attraction we can have... to prehistoric monuments, and to the other relics of vanished societies, may be what draws many to archaeology; but archaeology - the telling of stories about the past - can only do so much to illuminate our complex emotions or pin them down. The rest is, or could be, the province of poetry.

Philip Gross is one of the few poets to tackle these dark areas, and his latest collection, A Cast of Stones, is a set of meditations on Stonehenge and Avebury. In these acute, disturbing and often exhilarating poems he nails truths - the sheer indecipherability of the stones, for example, and the limitations of guidebook knowledge - that no archaeologist would dare to state. He also captures what may be the very essence of the appeal of the past - our simultaneous connection to it, and complete separation from it - that necessarily sounds leaden or lame when expressed in prose."*

* http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba18/ba18int.html

"Such a small band of brothers and sisters, sharing our love for stones and still places. Easy to forget that they endure while we do not. And in our passing by we might smile and squabble or write a line or two but then, too soon, are gone again."

Thanks for putting those beautiful words on your Meg Poems site as a tribute to Treaclechops Littlestone
http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/2007/01/out-of-strong-came-forth-sweetness.html

So unspeakably sad. Perhaps there is a shadow of positivity in the thought that in expressing our thoughts about the stones we all add to their story in a small way.

There is a stone there,
That whoever kisses,
Oh, he never misses
To grow eloquent.
'Tis he may clamber
To a lady's chamber,
Or become a member
Of Parliament.

Silbury

Has time stood still?
I wondered
As I gazed upon that hollow hill
Exposed to howling wind and rain
Yet silent, still unmoved

Do spirits sleep within its heart?
I wondered
Looking back into the dark
Where bone is old as stone
And legend first drew breath

This Moon upon the Earth
Once shining bright
Now dulled by soil and turf
With beliefs so long forgotten
Those treasures hidden deep within.

This is a place
Of wonder
Of a celestial embrace
Where the Gods touch the Earth
And the Earth meets the Sky

slumpy

In the afternoon come to Abebury, where, seeing
great stones like those of Stonage standing up, I stopped, and took a countryman of that town, and he carried me and shewed me a place trenched
in, like Old Sarum almost, with great stones pitched in it, some bigger
than those at Stonage in figure, to my great admiration: and he told me
that most people of learning, coming by, do come and view them, and that
the King did so: and that the Mount cast hard by is called Selbury, from
one King Seall buried there, as tradition says. I did give this man 1s.
So took coach again, seeing one place with great high stones pitched
round, which, I believe, was once some particular building, in some
measure like that of Stonage. But, about a mile off, it was prodigious to
see how full the Downes are of great stones; and all along the vallies,
stones of considerable bigness, most of them growing certainly out of the
ground so thick as to cover the ground, which makes me think the less of
the wonder of Stonage, for hence they might undoubtedly supply themselves
with stones, as well as those at Abebury.

Scratchmarks in the chalk

A scar, a blemish
undetected
Sacred places now
neglected
Hiding secrets
unsuspected
Just scratchmarks in the chalk

Hopes, beliefs now long
rejected
Dedications
unrespected
Sacred landscapes
unprotected
Just scratchmarks in the chalk

Modern farming
unaffected
Earth and human
disconnected
Inherited yet not
protected
Just scratchmarks in the chalk

This has been around since Thornborough and Tara made the headlines, though not directly about either. A bit Crass-esque for you lovers of protest punk ;)

And no, I didn't use a rhyming dictionary.

I didn't plan on submitting anything at all [don't want to hog the thread and all that] but I was captivated by this image today http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/55670 and it just grabbed me. A stunning photo. Before I knew it this was sitting in front of me.

Like hooded mourners
they show no face
they speak no words
they leave no trace
the winter rain
the spring snowfall
the burning sun
and through it all
they watch
they wait

Like shrouded dead
they bide their time
they break no silence
they make no sign
their lonely vigil
their unheard call
an endless dream
and through it all
they watch
they wait

Strikes a few chords round here I reckon!
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/15588/

Scarce images of life , one here , one there ,
Lay vast and edgeways ;like a dismal cirque
Of druid stones , upon a forlorn moor ,

John Keats , Hyperion .

"You may put a hundred questions to these rough-hewn giants as they bend in grim contemplation of their fallen companions; but your curiosity falls dead in the vast sunny stillness that enshrouds them, and the strange monument, with all its unspoken memories, becomes simply a heart-stirring picture in a land of pictures … "

and

""It is indeed immensely picturesque. I can fancy sitting all a summer's day watching its shadows shorten and lengthen again, and drawing a delicious contrast between the world's duration and the feeble span of individual experience. There is something in Stonehenge almost reassuring; and if you are disposed to feel that life is rather a superficial matter, and that we soon get to the bottom of things, the immemorial gray pillars may serve to remind you of the enormous background of time."

Equinox greetings to one and all.

Thought the following had the right feel to it for the day. Image of Amairgen himself at - http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/

Song of Amairgen

I am a wind upon the sea
I am a sea-wave on the land
I am the sound of breaking waves
Encompassing all that I see.

Erin is my lady love
Erin is my heart of gold
Erin is all my joy
And who but my lady Erin?

I am a stag of seven tines
I am a hawk upon a cliff
I am a tear-drop of the sun
Encompassing all that I see.

Fairer than I there is no plant,
I am a battle-hardened boar,
I am a salmon in a pool,
Encompassing all that I see.

A silver lake set in a plain,
The excellence of all the arts,
A battle-waging spear am I Encompassing all that I see.

Amairgen Glungel son of Mil,
A god who sets the head afire,
The secret of the mountain stones,
Encompassing all that I see.

I invoke the ages of the moon,
And steer the course of the setting sun
Bearing cattle from Tethra's house,
Encompassing all that I see.

The sea is bursting forth of fish,
The skies are full with flights of birds,
Manannan's cattle under wave,
And the land is broad of beasts.

Yvonne Aburrow

Remove not the ancient landmarks, which thy father's have set .

Proverbs 22:28

The ancient Druids offer’d to their gods
A human sacrifice; and criminals
On their stone alters bled beneath the knife
The priestly arm upraised, rudely to plunge
Into an erring brother’s living heart,
Or else, in osier cages first confined,
Expired in flames lit by some priestly hand:
And we, whose scaffolds oft have reek’d with gore
Of earth’s best benefactors; we, whose cells
Have prison’d up the patriot and divine;
And who still strangle with the hangman’s rope
To teach the sanctity of human life;
Ard ever study how to cheat in trade
Or kill in war with most proficiency,
Self-rightous hypocrites who but deceive
Ourselves and one another; we despise
The Druid for his paganism, meanwhile
We worship Gold as though it were a god,
And call ourselves good Christians

Peter Proletarius

Proletarius was one of the pen names of the 19th century printer, publisher, author, poet, historian and radical, George Markham Tweddell.

Tweddell also wrote;

“Scoff not at antiquarian research,
As useless in results; for it throws light
Upon the darkness of the past to aid
Humanity along its devious way”

Hob, the poem that you posted yonks ago by Walter Scott (Cowt's Grave) is now up on http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/ Need to check out a couple of things - do you have a link to the poem?

Thanks.

From The New Yorker, March 26, 2007. I know it's not European (and not exactly megalithic fi truth be told), but I was moved by it, and thought I'd share it with you and the gestalt mind........

Peace

Pilgrim

X

THE MUSEUM OF STONES

This is your museum of stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir,
stones loosened by tanks in the streets
of a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,
schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,
pebble from Apollinaire’s oui,
stone of the mind within us
carried from one silence to another,
stone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, hornblende,
agate, marble, millstones, and ruins of choirs and shipyards,
chalk, marl, and mudstone from temples and tombs,
stone from the silvery grass near the scaffold,
stone from the tunnel lined with bones,
lava of the city’s entombment,
chipped from lighthouse, cell wall, scriptorium,
paving stones from the hands of those who rose against the army,
stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,
those that had flown through windows and weighted petitions,
feldspar, rose quartz, slate, blueschist, gneiss, and chert,
fragments of an abbey at dusk, sandstone toe
of a Buddha mortared at Bamiyan,
stone from the hill of three crosses and a crypt,
from a chimney where storks cried like human children,
stones newly fallen from stars, a stillness of stones, a heart,
altar and boundary stone, marker and vessel, first cast, lode, and hail,
bridge stones and others to pave and shut up with,
stone apple, stone basil, beech, berry, stone brake,
stone bramble, stone fern, lichen, liverwort, pippin, and root,
concretion of the body, as blind as cold as deaf,
all earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone-faced, stone-drunk
with hope that this assemblage, taken together, would become
a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immovable and sacred,
like the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawn.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/03/26/070326po_poem_forche

A fine poem "

There was a young man from Castle Cob..

slumpy, have you got a decent pic of the Uffington White Horse (your own or someone else's that's out of copyright) that I can use for one of your poems?

Failing that, does anyone have a pic of the UWH that I could use?

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

from "East Coker " T.S. Eliot .

Is naff stuff eligible?

If so, may I offer the naff lyrics to the official song of the naff 7 Wonders vote?
http://www.new7wonders.com/fileadmin/resources/shop/song/n7w-song-lyrics.pdf

I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.

I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?’
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.

Yet I wanted to look and see
That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision
A shape which, somehow, there may be.’
So I went on softly from the glade,
And left her behind me throwing her shade,
As she were indeed an apparition—
My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Thanks to Gerald Ponting for sending in this one. Gerald goes on to say, "I was at Max Gate recently, the house on the outskirts of Dorchester where Hardy lived much of his later life. There are two sarsens which Hardy had set up in the garden, not in original situ, but geophys studies when the nearby by-pass was created suggested that they had been part of a 'Neolithic enclosure'.

"The poem is on the web at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178481 it's basically him imagining a shadow of his late wife."

I have no idea how this happened. I love Joy Division, and I decided to take a song and change the lyrics enough without losing the anger. It feels slightly sacriligeous, though there were alternatives ["Is this the crisis I knew had to come, destroying the balanced I'd kept?"] but it sums up my feelings well enough.

A legacy, in time removed
Your guardianship to prove
Eternal rights we left behind
In trust, our World enshrined
To pay respects, protect it too
We put our trust in you
We put our trust in you

We thought our Gods would recognise
Our efforts justified
Strange the way that hopes can rise
Our vision touched the skies
Immortal gift, our love to prove
We put our trust in you
We put our trust in you

Beneath a hill of sacred soil
This modern vermin's spoil
Is this your hope, your final deed?
Where prayers are left to bleed
Resigned to this, we curse your soul
We put our trust in you
We put our trust in you

Extract from 'The Open Air' (Wildflowers Chapter) by Richard Jefferies - first published 1885

The great stone of the fallen cromlech, crouching down afar off in the plain behind me, cast its shadow in the sunny morn as it had done, so many summers, for centuries - for thousands of years: worn white by the endless sunbeams - the ceaseless flood of light - the sunbeams of centuries, the impalpable beams polishing and grinding like rushing water: silent, yet witnessing of the Past; shadowing the Present on the dial of the field: a mere dull stone; but what is it the mind will not employ to express to itself its own thoughts?

well i can't believe that i would keep
keep you from flying
and i would cry 1000 more
if that's what it takes to sail you home
sail you home, sail you home

i'm aware what the rules are
but you know that i will run
you know that i will follow you
over silbury hill through the solar field
you know that i will follow you*

Tori Amos, Live performance of 1000 Oceans @ The Hard Rock Cafe

* Listen and watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvZz5NMUZJ0

http://books.google.com/books?id=ubgHAAAAQAAJ&dq=lucas+%22old+serpentine+temple%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=_6kvGaQmKn&sig=pb4OwmfXWG1qQ29dw-Vo3v5Ez8U#PPA7,M1

He goes on a bit, and is a bit mad, but there are some interesting bits in the footnotes.

I love his description of it as "a snakey pile"

Rightly quoted by Rev AC Smith as appropriate to Silbury on page 144 of his (fascinating) paper on Silbury in the The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine in 1862
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KDYGAAAAQAAJ&dq=The+Wiltshire+Archaeological+and+Natural+History+Magazine+By+Edward+Hungerford+Goddard&pg=PA1&ots=2QvYknPk0s&sig=9RzuoCa7-9VydT1MBo8BVWO5Q_k&prev=http://www.google.co.uk/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3DThe%2BWiltshire%2BArchaeological%2Band%2BNatural%2BHistory%2BMagazine%2BBy%2BEdward%2BHungerford%2BGoddard%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch%26meta%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPP7,M1

Unchanged it stands: it awes the lands
Beneath the clear dark sky ;
But at what time its head sublime
It heavenward reared, and why—
The gods that see all things that be
Can better tell than I

I should be penning lines that recall
The ancients from whom we’ve been sundered
But the purpose of writing this is all
To see this thread pass six hundred

O Thou, to whom in the olden time was raised
Yon ample Mound, not fashion'd to display
An artful structure, but with better skill
Piled massive, to endure through many an age,
How simple, how majestic is thy tomb!
When temples and when palaces shall fall,

And mighty cities moulder into dust,
When to their deep foundations Time shall shake
The strong-based pyramids, shall thine remain
Amid the general ruin unsubdued,
Uninjured as the everlasting hills,
And mock the feeble power of storms and Time.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:GKJc2Xpm6_IJ:dev.hil.unb.ca/Texts/EPD/UNB/view-works.cgi%3Fc%3Dcrowewil.1336%26pos%3D1+%22william+CROWE%22+%22silbury%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&ie=UTF-8
Page 125

To map the magic of the Rollright Ring

To feel the lines of force pulse through the air

To lay its megalithic secrets bare

In the stillness of a summer evening

To walk in wonder through the Avebury Stones

And track earth’s whispering patterns there

Then dowse the rings about the Devil’s Chair

And know the nature of their undertones

To stand in awe within the Stonehenge zone

And check the powers that charge the winter’s air

To probe its dazzling patterns, then dare

To sound the secrets of the Slaughter Stone

To view the world from Silbury’s soaring crest

And sense the power throbbing in its core

In tune with Gaia’s geodetic law

These earthly enigmas I treasure best.

These monuments were raised by men who knew

The patterned secrets in the planet’s crust

Who harnessed Gala’s power with sacred trust

In circle, barrow, hill and avenue.

Their sacred circles now stand vandalised

The sarcens grey and shattered lie around

Razed by religious zealots to the ground

Who saw Satan in the circles they despised.

Yet Silbury Hill still thrusts towards the sun

Like the breast of a giant Amazon

Immune to all, this cryptic paragon

Preceded Mycenae, Crete and Babylon

And like the pyramids win also be

As enduring as Everest, or the sea

Henge, barrow and midsummer hill
Are stations in the sacred landscape.
Here the timeless Goddess enters
The times of her tribes. It was lifetimes back
And what it meant we have almost forgotten,
Almost forgotten.

We killed a child
With great honour and buried her body
Curled like a snail at the heart of the henge
Where earth spirits might rise through her grave,
Follow the curve of the bent bones
And spiral out among villagers dancing
The sunwheel dance that is danced in spring.
A captive ghost, in my meditation,
She takes my hand, but I cannot lead her
Beyond the ring where the magic fixed her.
She will be four years old forever,
And crowned with flowers.

But all the rest of us
Have to be laid in tribal earth
To be remade by the winter Goddess
Before we come back to the world again.
She is the sow that eats her farrow,
Old bones cracking within the barrow,
But to those whom she fails to frighten
A giver of gifts.

No corpses lie
On midsummer hill, but of all the stations
This is the saddest. The sun on high
Burns, burns as midsummer’s Queen
Hands over her whitening world to death-
The fields by severance and the woods
By slow decay. With her hair combed out
In its red gold sheaves she is perfect strength
And perfect beauty about to fade
As from this moment summer does-
And the child will leave its mother and
The long procession wind down the hill.

Tony Grist

New Grange

The golden hill where long-forgotten kings
Keep lonely watch upon their feasting floor
Is silent now, the Dagda's harp no more
Makes sun and moon move to its murmurous
strings;
And never in the leafy star-led Springs
Will Caer and Aengus haunt the river
shore,
For deep beneath an ogham-carven door
Dust dulls the dew-white wonder of their
wings.
Yet one may linger loving the lost dream
The magic of the heart that cannot die,

Although the Rood destroy the quicken rods;
To him through earth and air and hollow
stream
Wild music winds, as two swans wheeling cry
Above the cromlech of the vanished gods.

Thomas Samuel Jones Jr (1882-1932)

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
and sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams;
We are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844-1881)

To stoneheads everywhere :-) Wishing one and all a peaceful and happy winter solstice.

Menhir tall, taunting me with your mystery
Why do you hide your secrets from me?
Visions of our ancestors locked inside
Knowledge long forgotten
Tall and proud, as old as time
You stand forever watching us change.

Faintly, and as if from a great distance.*

Fall steps along the hallowed, hollowed whitened path
that began four millennia ago
and end today
in a pile of rusted iron struts
and rotting Merewether timbers.
Cast sarsen souls on pallets
of 21st century dust.

Words fail
voids fill
then open up on another dismal collapsing surface
of another dark day of dismal lies.

And all the time they paint another rosy watercolour
of consolidation and restoration and not-in-the-book conservation.
Epithets for the spineless.
Phoney photographs for the future.

While a thousand plastic bags pad out their stupidities.

LS

* Thanks to gjrk for this line.

Ok, I'm not so sure about this because it turned out a bit bleaker than I expected it would. Its about the foundation deposit at a stone circle in County Cork (not sounding promising!) and manages to squeeze in the faint/distance theme.

Lettergorman South.

Beal's eye planting with a gaze and reaping with a glance.
From the breast of a lover, into his breath I went spinning.
Twisting, turning and entranced, unmoving onto this.
From the top of the dog's hill, into his stop I sit staring.

Face my brothers to the mountains and my sister to the stream.
Mad minds melted by the years, pouring their grief into raving.
While the whispers of my kinfolk, hissed as this dance moved the sun,
are now faint in the distance, and taunt this terrible waiting.

Time for my check-up I think...

Hi Littlestone,

I've searched my way down and I don't think that you have this couple. I may have missed them in the crowd though, so my apologies if that's the case:

'In the Seven Woods' (August 1902)

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of all things happy.
I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs
A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-Lee.

Over a century old and it could have just been written.

Lines 13 to 30 from 'The Wanderings of Oisin' (1889)

Caoilte, and Conan, and Finn were there,
When we followed a deer with our baying hounds,
With Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair,
And passing the Firbolgs' burial-mounds,
Came to the cairn-heaped grassy hill
Where passionate Maeve is stony-still;
And found on the dove-grey edge of the sea
A pearl-pale, high-born lady, who rode
On a horse with bridle of findrinny;
And like a sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships;
A citron colour gloomed in her hair,
But down to her feet white vesture flowed,
And with the glimmering crimson glowed
Of many a figured embroidery;
And it was bound with a pearl-pale shell
That wavered like the summer streams,
As her soft bosom rose and fell.

Slightly running past the antiquarian content there, but Niamh's enchantment is worth the extra lines it works from! Yeats put it quite bluntly, looking back in 'The Circus Animals' Desertion':
"But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride."

P.S. Having read Nigel Swift's Ozymandias contribution, I thought of this, read straight rather than as an image:

V, lines 1 to 5, 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen'

Come let us mock at the great
That had such burdens on the mind
And toiled so hard and late
To leave some monument behind,
Nor thought of the levelling wind.

g

Not strictly megalithic, but seasonal.
My excuse is that I was in Avebury yesterday and it was just like this.

OVER the land half freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed,
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as a flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

Maiden Castle

They said it could not be conquered
guarded by silent eyes and fierce hearts.

~ How tight is your grip son
thrust here – strike low
find the tendon release it from the bone ~

Who comes to such a place
there was no prize here.
Why did you come
across Poseidon’s plateau?

This castle was not the heart of the people!

The fort may have been their body
ringed
in complex configuration
but each blade of grass was their soul
planted
in rapacious repetition.

~ For it will come to pass
mark my words true
Belatucadros has spoken
All hail the god’s vengeance!
We may slip into his arms this day
but our souls will never be taken
We look out to our enemy and know
that for every one of their victories
we take two for our own! ~

Persephone Vandegrift

I see the first ones lately much more clearly
Spilling blood along the turning ground
Diving...
In your eyes...

Will you feel the softly spoken lies
Will you find what lives behind my eyes...

Lyrics by Caroline Lavelle from her song Turning Ground. Video by Matthew De Haven, Ode to Stonehenge at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3QS4W2uBQ

I awake to darkness.
Cold damp slabs of stone
on all four sides, and above.
In time I see the faint glow
as granite is pressed upon
by the tons of earth above me.
I feel the random shards of quartz
pulse in unison.
Beside me lies a flawless greenstone axe,
never used in labour, or in anger.
I wail a banshee wail,
but beyond, the moor is dark and vast, devoid of man.
And the chill wind blows
through the hooting carn
camouflaging my efforts.
There is no escape.
I lie in a foetal position and shiver,
and await my death.
Finally, the juddering ceases.
The body lies still,
and time hangs on a single heartbeat.
The darkness expands, and with it time.
I see my bones dissolve in the acid liquor.
I see men who wallow in abundance
and pillage for more.
I see a time when knowledge is a commodity
to be jealously guarded,
then sold to the highest bidder.
I see the bare bones
of the granite quoit
toppled and forlorn.
I see the axe no more.

Chris Bond, 25 February 2001.

Trudging in Autumnal heat to visualise ancestor's feat,
of engineering, they knew how,
I wonder why, don't know right now,
The "Busy people" Ancient folk
knew how to toil, their Gods, their yolk,
but they were free in many ways,
than we, the slaves of debt and broke,
I capture pictures in the box, to paw, enhance, rotate, the lot
But when I see pixels abound, I know I travelled sacred grounds,
for their Gods call through nature's stone, I will return, never alone.

Jonathan Sansome

Another to add to the list; it comes from Jeremy Hooker's "Soliloquies of a Chalk Giant" (he's the Cerne one) too many to add here, but its funny a chalk giant talking to himself all through the centuries, he's not too keen on being scoured either....

A reindeer bone carved
In the reindeer's likeness
Saddle quern
Loom-weight
Spindle whorl.
A chalk phallus
A lump of chalk
With heavy curves bearing
The image of woman.

A necklace with blue beads
of Egyptian faience, black ones
of Kimmeride shale.
Slingstone
Cannon ball
Cartridge.
A phallus carved on the church wall.
A statuette of the virgin.

A coin worn headless,
with a disarticulate horse
Cartwheel
Crankshaft
flash bulb
a bust of the death-god
cast in imperishable alloy.

With thanks to Littlestone for the prompt and Persephone for the scissors:

The Great Leader (A Passage Tomb at Duntryleague, County Limerick)

An eye on the hilltop, bristling with trees,
whose dark lashes blink in the shuddering breeze -
a lingering witness of a day long past,
when that petrified carcass first rose from the grass.
It waited for legends to grow in the tomb
and pulse through this salmon-flesh quartz-speckled room
where I sit dreaming of spines of stones,
of flakes of life once picked from their bones.

Mixed with soil in a corn-coloured powder,
Olill Olum lies, the people's great leader.
"Place me on high, over the valley's soft breath,
where I can see and be seen, even in death."

Didn't expect to be back so soon, but I visited a site on Saturday that was almost completely destroyed early in the 20th century and the one remaining stone has now been overgrown and abandoned. It stuck in my head since, you know, the sadness of it. Anyway, here goes:

Please won't you grind me from this ground?
I can't hear them. Are they gone?
A last dance made holy by the flames.
A last breath made sacred by the bonds.
Please, it's the dark that's choking me.
I can't see. Where are they gone?

I had a long explanation for this but it just seemed to take from it. It's driven by two sites really - the bull-horned boulder at Tinneel, near the old centre of Ros Alithir and the three quartz stones at Maulatanvally, at the centre of it all. More on that later, maybe...

Where is Eochaidh? A roar through the rushes
as sucking punches follow hooves. Thunder.
A rotting shape under May-shroud bushes
that squirms with a stinking Genesis. Worm.
Eochaidh Bán, does sweat grip your tongue?
Does salt mist form a husk on Meall an tsean baile?
Here’s where you lie under protruding teeth,
an unforgiving weight. What have I done?

(Oh, I probably should have said that Eochaidh, or the many parts of him, is Eochaidh Ollathair, or the Dagda.)

AT hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling
In search of something chance would never bring,
An old man's face, by life and weather cut
And coloured,--rough, brown, sweet as any nut,--
A land face, sea-blue-eyed,--hung in my mind
When I had left him many a mile behind.
All he said was: "Nobody can't stop 'ee. It's
A footpath, right enough. You see those bits
Of mounds--that's where they opened up the barrows
Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows.
They thought as there was something to find there,
But couldn't find it, by digging, anywhere."

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

Thanks to moss for this. Seasonally apt and the poem in full to be found at - http://www.northstoke.blogspot.com/ (Thomas goes on to mention Alton Barnes, Alton Priors and other places of interest in the area). See also http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_781531805/Thomas_(Philip)_Edward.html for more about Thomas and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubber_fiend for more about Lob.

Wiltshire Downs

The cuckoo's double note
Loosened like bubbles from a drowning throat
Floats through the air
In mockery of pipit, lark and stare.
The stable boys thud by
Their horses slinging divots at the sky
And with bright hooves
Printing the sodden turf with lucky grooves.
As still as a windhover
A shepherd in his napping coat leans over
His tall sheep-crook
And shearlings, tegs and yoes cons like a book.
And one tree-crowned long barrow
Stretched like a sow that has brought forth her farrow
Hides a king's bones
Lying like broken sticks among the stones.

Wiltshire Downs - Andrew Young (1885-1971)

The wild circle at Bohonagh, mixed with a certain amount of despair about the future:

Did I hear you whistle, or was it the breeze
blowing through grey lips pursed with nettles? Listen.
Four shrieking blasts and no more; “I am the life.”
Where did I hear that before? In a bellows,
keeping heat to the forge. A false wind perhaps,
to warm your fat cattle for the equinox.
Or were you just their scratching post?

(My apologies, but the last few lines of the poem were bugging me so much I just cut them. Surgery.)

Best wishes for the megameet! Just for mood, here's one about the Winter Solstice and fear of mortality. Lovely. Three cheers and we're off...

Dusk. The brush of a hare, in flight, flicks the long grass
in a gust of fast-fading foot beats. Time’s curtain parts
and on the hill bulls roar through bronze trumpets and rattles
click, fertile in the writhing flames - dancing thorn-shadow.
What masque is this? Abandon. Whitened faces and rough
breathing blow a swirling cloud to obscure it again.
Saturnalia. A turning word on the wind.

Storms leave a fossil in a pliable mind
and slick, stiff, five fingers grope, grey in the mist.
A terrible Titan lurks under the hand.
Inhumed on the hillside, he feels my flesh drawing close
and hungry horns oscillate the land.

Often megaliths look like a tip to the whole that the ground has covered over and five stone circles can then look like fingertips reaching out. Stay clear of the fog at Avebury!

g

The Hurlers by Seth Lakeman

Sunday morning,
In the summer time.
Over worship we hurlers climb
over mountains and valleys deep.
Those bells are ringing
Around our feet.

Come, take this warning
cried the priest.
All good hurlers
at the devils feast.
He will curse where you stand
Mark his circle upon our land

Oh hurler boys come on
make your choice.

Where you stand
(hey hey)
Where you stand

Bold, brave and strong
we ran the day
Til thunder rolled in with silver rain
There were fingers down our backs
curse is rising
and we were trapped

Oh hurler boys come on
make your choice.
And he said
Oh you hurlers boys come on
make your choice.

Where you stand

Tall, straight and stubborn
we face the sky
that lightning pierced us
our voices cried out
bodies silver
our hearts of stone
we make no shadows
we stand alone.

... from Seth Lakeman’s new album (released today) ‘Poor man’s heaven’
http://www.sethlakeman.co.uk/

Is this as far as we have gone; white stone
or a brazen serpent to look upon?
Such a heavy asp to wrap around a staff
or beam; “Mene, mene, tekel, u-pharsin.”
I shall take a great leap in the air and
hold as long as I can and only then.
Let the piper sound my fall. If he will.

And again.

This impassioned poem/prose written by someone unknown, was written to encourage faltering spirits as the relentless construction of the motorway through the heartland of Tara continues apace........

Tara remains.
Skryne remains.
The Gabhra River remains.
The spirit of that land remains.
And so long as either of those remain, we FIGHT for it.
Whether by word or by action.
Whether you choose to do it by intellect, or by magick.
By fact or by faith.
We FIGHT for it.
Because it is all worth FIGHTING for.
Our ancestors didnae' fight for the freedom of this land and its people, only to
have us lay down in the wake of another kind of tyrrany.
It has been said by a woman to "Never doubt that a small, determined group of
individuals can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever really
has."
I, for one, will not give up. And I am but a descendant of the Isle.
I am still her child.
One of millions.
I refuse to give up.
What say the rest of you?

Anon

Henge of stones and dreams of old

I am a fool.
From a distance
An ocean-span shall we say
I thought you were just stone sticks.

On my stomach
I floated
In dreams mind you
down the Avon
to prove my thoughts wrong.

I am jealous of you
I should like to wear a henge
as sophisticated as you do
that would make scholars wonder
and trowels pause in mid air.

And what was burned here?
What was burned?
And no lying
just how old are the ashes found?
No more fairy tales
and alignments
or spiritual ownership.

Come, come now,
these stone sticks
should be full of confessions
and of pride-pocked veins
that do not warrant such fertile
emotional destruction.

If I could grant you one thing
despite the limited power I possess
it would be the freedom
to escape back down the river
and the right to finally collapse
into your parents grieving arms.

© Copyright Persephone Vandegrift 2008

TARA OF THE KINGS

WE MET AT THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
WHEN EVERYTHING STOOD STILL
HER SLOPING AWAY LIKE ISEULT
LEFT ME OVER THE HILL
I RAISED THE CHAMBER IN THE MOUND
THE OAK-FRINGED SACRED SPRING
THAT FEEDS THE STREAMS THAT RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS

SHE WAS THROUGH WITH CARBON DATING
STAKEHOLDERS WITH NO HAIR
SHE WAS THROUGH WITH MONSTER MEETINGS
IN FLATS OFF PARNELL SQUARE
SHE WAS THROUGH WITH CROWNED AND UNCROWNED
YEW TREES WITH COUNTLESS RINGS
THE DITCH THAT USED TO RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS

COULD WE WHO ENDURED THE PENAL
AND EDWARD POYNING’S LAWS
(NEVER MIND THE BEEF TRIBUNAL)
NOW SOMEHOW BE IN AWE
OF A ROAD RUNNING THROUGH THE GROUND
ON WHICH STOOD OUR ALTHING
AND NOT ENSURE IT RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS?

WE KNOW THE STONE OF DESTINY
WAS SET UP IN THIS SOIL
NOW THE SOLDIERS OF DESTINY
ARE SET TO BANK THE SPOILS
AND LEST THEY WISH TO BE RENOWNED
FOR RAPE AND RAVISHING
THEY’LL NOT GIVE US THE RUNAROUND
ON TARA OF THE KINGS

WE’RE FATED TO BE REMEMBERED
AS SPOILERS OF THE DEAD

AND THOUGH WE SEEM QUITE UNHAMPERED
BY HONOUR OR BY DREAD
YET WE ARE DREAD- AND HONOUR-BOUND
TO OUR UNBORN OFFSPRING
TO ENSURE THE M3 RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS

Paul Muldoon

Poets and Musicians at Tara

"Save Tara campaigners are proud to announce that an international gathering of the Irish diaspora of poets and musicians will perform at "Feis Teamhra, a turn at Tara" on the Hill of Tara, Co. Meath on Sunday 24th. August at 3.30pm.

"Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer prize-winner, will read his poetry to celebrate and honour Tara and will be joined by musicians: Grammy award-winner Susan McKeown, Laoise Kelly, Aidan Brennan and others."

Thanks to moss for this press release. For more information go to -http://www.savetara.com/statements/081408_poets.html

There once was a plinth of great height
that incited the maiden's delight
it was made of pink stone
and shaped like a bone
and was paid tribute with flowers by night

To the south of the village a tunnel
formed by aeons of watery funnel
yawned open and blew
warm wet foggy dew
into which the young men would pummel

Those ancestors are no more,
with their stone yings and yangs and their lore:
It's all fine to talk,
But rock is rock..!
Their naughty bits just got too sore!

-A variant on the ever popular 'man from Nantucket' alley of the poetic arts.
-Dave

Displaced
souls of our ancestors
Once in a circle to the seasons
sure security to all who saw them

Buffer stones now on a busy street
where juggernauts thunder by
their secret story
still known
to a few

For the rest
just buffer stones
where our history lies dusty
at the feet of rubber wheels
and on the piled desks
of an immovable bureaucracy

Anon

See also http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/img_fullsize/69863.jpg and http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2065/ingatestone.html

From western lands beyond the foam,
We sought our English fathers' home
By few or known or sung.
Which 'neath the quiet English skies,
far from all busy haunts it lies
The wide chalk downs among.

Huge druid stones surround the spot,
Which else had almost been forgot
By the great world without.
The mystic ring now scarcely traced
Is by a grassy dike embraced,
Circling the whole about.

Deep hangs the thatch on cottage eaves,
And buried deep in ivy leaves
The cottage windows gleam.
There little birds fly to and fro,
And happy children come and go
With rosy cheek and rustic walk,
They curtsy for the gentle folk,
As they the strangers deem.

With pinks and stocks the beds are gay,
And box and yew their shapes display
Fantastically trimmed.
And each small garden overflows
With scent of woodbine and of rose
Above the borders trim.

The ancient little Norman church,
With quaintly medieval porch,
Stands 'neath the elm tree tall
Sunk in the graveyard plot around,
The moss-grown headstones scarce
are found
Few stoop the lettering to trace
Which time's rude hand will soon efface.
Some there may be of highborn race,
But none the names recall.

The many gabled manor house,
With winking casement sheen,
Seem in the summer light to drowse
And dream of what has been
And we may dream of earlier days,
When the old convent marked the place,
When nuns in gown and coif complete,
Paced the green paths with quiet feet,
And gather herbs and simples small
Beneath the high brick garden wall,
Finding a safe retreat.

Like some small nest securely placed,
With ferns and grass interlaced,
But open to the light,
The hamlets seem to lie at rest
Upon the common's ample breast,
Secure in loneliness of space
From aught that could the charm efface
Of innocence and old-world grace
Worn by ancestral right.

Home of sweet days and thankful nights,
Fair fall on thee the morning light,
Soft fall the evening dews.
Wild winds perchance may sweep the wold
But age, untouched by storm or cold,
In memory's sight thou standest there,
Encircled by serenest air,
In changeless summer hue.

Mary S Cope (1852-1888)

I passed here often when young, tired and bored
after another long day at the strand
and never looked past the gate, or did and
saw only cattle rubbing against a post.
It would be thirty years before I knew
of the cobwebs spun in the morning dew.

Written Within View of Castlerigg Stone Circle

I cannot believe
That in this fateful hour
The infinite beauty
that shall caress mine eyes
Behold!
I cannot believe, that the
Glorious fanfare of strange
Stark contrasts that my gaze
Is upon, so lifts me that
I become overwhelmed by passions
That I have never known.
I cannot believe that
The form of beauty
That the scene foretells
Can (alone) create such an impression
Upon my mind
That primeval memories stir
From depths uncharted territory.
So I am fired up by the glory of
The Holy Spirit
In Her pantheistic ways
Upon these eternal hills of mine.
I cannot believe that
Such variety of colour
And texture can engulf the
Ageless pattern strewn formations
Of fell side and mystic ring
And I cannot believe that Deity
Has not a hand in all of this and more
For surely all life's creation
Emanates from She who is
Sacred Earth's
Goddess Divine.

Alex Langstone

See also Alex's Spirit of Albion website here - http://www.alexlangstone.blogspot.com/

Stones is a song about Stonehenge (I think), composed by David "Iolo" Watson for ORIGIN, inc.'s Ultima computergame series. His wife Kathleen "Gwenno" Jones wrote the lyrics.
Scroll down here http://www.joxter.net

There's also a rather nice audio version here http://www.joxter.net /stones/bradvenable.mp3

I've been distressed that this list doesn't have a poem about the Stonehenge hedgehog. Fortunately I've found one, and it may give a clue to why hedgehogs were so revered in ancient times -

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/song-midis/Hedgehog_Song.htm

Jeremy Hooker wrote of this poem that he was inspired by Paul Nash's paintings of the daylight moon, something that you will see from November, if you are up early enough that is, is the moon high in the sky with the sun to the east breaking the horizon.

I first saw it inland,
Suddenly, round white sides
Rose through the thin grass
And for an instant, in the heat,
It was dazzling; but afterwards
I thought mainly of darkness,
Imagining the relics of an original
Sea under the chalk, with fishes
Beneath the fields. Later,
Everywhere upon its surface
I saw the life of the dead;
Circle within circle of earthen
Shells, and in retrace curves
Like finger marks in pale sand,

The print of a primaeval lover.
Once, climbing a dusty track,
I found a sunshaped urchin,
With the sun's rays, white
With the dusts of the moon,
Fetish, flesh become stone,
I keep it near me. It is
A mouth on darkness, the one
Inexhaustible source of re-creation

I wrote this a few years ago after an inspiring visit to Boscawen-Un. It won the Morris Cup (for best poem on a Cornish subject) in the 2003 Gorsedd, and was read aloud on BBC's Radio Cornwall.

Boscawen-Un, 30 October, Midnight

This black hood , pierced by stars, hangs about our heads,
a warm drapery, pressing down like stones
Upon the breasts of unrepentant witches.
The hallowed dew darkens our clothes,
torn as we plundered the gorse hedgerow,
branches tittering, alive with nightbirds,
(it blooms gold, but is russet red now, humbled in its descent to winter).
We flung ourselves upon this windblown heath,
attracted by dolmens, by demons,
by the mad epiphanies of a drunken dowser,
into this court of kings and ghosts and dancing maidens,
outlaws of heaven, time-keepers of earth.
Our hearts are become stone, throbbing, laughing,
older than books, wordless, hewn by barley sheaves,
and kissed, blessed, by cusp-born acolytes.
In daylight, we would be as bluebottles crushed upon a rough sundial,
consumed in powdered heat then lapped up by some lumpen hairy splitfoot throwback,
but now,
we are time itself, we gaze into deathless depths,
and see the pointed horns of bulls,
the gleaming eyes of archers,
the stag and the serpent,
blood of the warrior, wine of the mother,
the dust of stars that swirls down paths of ancestor glory,
cosmic ley lines linking planets to moons, summer to autumn,
heart joined to heart, and lip to lip,
confounding childhood lessons of the sky.

copyright 2003
by Peg Aloi