Megalithic Poems

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Rhiannon wrote:
She was on Jeremy Paxman's programme last night talking about the embryonic Severn... I'm guessing you saw her?! It was a nice programme.
Well I must have found the poem in 2012, she is writing about Pentre Ifan, and says...

"What set me on this stony path was working on a commission to write about a megalith which I’ve known all my life, since early childhood days spent in Pembrokeshire with my grandmother on the farm. The megalith is a massive but elegant cromlech known as Pentre Ifan, in the hills above the Irish Sea. The huge weight of the capstone seems scarcely to touch the orthostats. Within sight of the sea, under the granite outcrop of Carn Meini - source of the bluestones of Stonehenge - Pentre Ifan is a pictogram from the alphabet of stone. I read its silhouette as the very word for cromlech. Carn Meini is formed from igneous granite, as old and as hard as any rock on the planet, an outburst of molten dolerite and rhyolite from the Earth’s mantle. Under Carn Meini the fields slip downhill to the sea, the underlying sedimentary rock blown away in the wind, aeon by aeon, from Carn Meini’s bony shoulders."

Apparently the poem must have been in a book called "Megalith: Eleven Journeys in Search of Stones". Can't remember reading it though.

These words written, & so wisely deliberated over..the way they can capture the essence & experience of being in a place. It takes a certain kind of pace of brain I think. Regardless of facts surrounding; I know that these words describe stuff I can't adequately express. See,"stuff"..)

moss wrote:
"Pentre Ifan is a pictogram from the alphabet of stone. I read its silhouette as the very word for cromlech. Carn Meini is formed from igneous granite, as old and as hard as any rock on the planet, an outburst of molten dolerite and rhyolite from the Earth’s mantle."
Ah... the Dolerite connection.

Dolerite, porphyry, gabbro fired
At the earth's young heart: how those men
Handled them. Set on back-breaking
Geometry, the symmetries of solstice,
What they awaited we, too, still wait.

The first poem in this too long-lasting thread... but... still my favourite :-)

Though not strictly megalithic it reminded me of the herepath in Avebury that runs down from the Ridgeway (Green Street). That path (the herepath) must surely predate both the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans.

Herepath

Wide as ten men abreast
The old military road
Cuts between farms
Dips down to the river
Rises up over the moor
Rabbits lollop along it
Lambs bleat in fields beside it
Rosebay glows at sunset
Where were the wars that you marched to?
What were the victories that you won?
Here on the old Herepath
The road truly goes ever on

Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond. The Cheesesellers wife.