Megalithic Poems

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Looking for Welsh books this morning came across the following poem, it makes you cry and laugh at the same time. The stone in question comes from Pentre Ifan..


Near the cromlech
lies my favourite.
It’s fallen out with the others,
left out of the circle,
ditched in a damp hollow
like a huge toad
keeping its head down.


Megalith, giant stone.
Nobody knows it’s there,
hidden in long grass
cooling its bluestone bones,
asleep under the sun,
under the stars
for four thousand years.


So when I stroke it,
I’m sure it’s the first time
anyone gave it a friendly scratch
for at least four millennia.
I’m sure its stone heart
is beating under my thumb.
I’m sure it’s breathing.


Gillian Clarke

Nice find moss!

Digging round in old TMA threads earlier, I came across this quote by Simon Denison - posted by morfe in 2004, and taken from an interview with Philip Gross that appeared in the October 1996 issue of British Archaeology -

"It is, perhaps, surprising that so few poets have written about our feelings for the past."

Apart from that ;-) the rest of the article is quite good, and includes poems from Gross’ A Game of Henge which are also in here somewhere.