Swing the antler pick and make it work
Dig the earth, Mothers bounty plunge
Ditch from flat make, bank from level make
Lower it and raise it deep and high
Enclose it, and shield it from the curious eye
And within ahh within what do we protect?
The Holies, the market, the meeting, the bridepost
The Folk join and the Folk separate all within the bank
Sunrise and Sunset, Mid-Winter and Summer
The cows graze and wander the sacred ways
The grass grows green, the pits are dug, fires are lit
Flint sharp and bone white, amber and jet lie beaded
Within the embrace of Mothers arms, young child and dog
Feasts remains and alder and ash branches soon to rot
Beaker tall and pot with mouth wide, agape
The sanctuary and the secular one indivisible
So I swing the antler pick and make it work
Edward Radfall
The Heritage Trust
Preserving the Past for the Future
About Me
- Littlestone
- Studied art and design at Swindon School of Art, Wiltshire, England and afterwards Japanese painting and calligraphy at Kyoto University of Fine Arts, Kyoto, Japan. In 1966 I was a lay monk at the Zen Buddhist temple of Ryozen-an in Kyoto and practiced under the guidance of its Director, Ruth Fuller-Sasaki and senior monk Dana R Fraser (co-translator of Layman P'ang: A Ninth Century Zen Classic). Also present at Ryozen-an was the author and poet Gary Snyder. Gary Snyder was one of the first Westerners in Japan to study Zen Buddhism and was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's book, The Dharma Bums. I was assistant conservator (paintings) at Kyoto National Museum from 1969-1980 and Chief Conservator (Eastern Pictorial Art) at the British Museum from 1980-1986. Japan Foundation Fellow 1973-1974 and Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works since 1985.
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