Maulatanvally

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?

gjrk

Here’s where you lie. Image credit gjrk

Its tale of ruin tells

The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls
As if that soul were fled.
So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory's thrill is o'er,
And hearts that once beat high for praise
Now feel that praise no more.

No more to chiefs and ladies bright,
The harp of Tara swells;
The chord alone, that breaks at night,
Its tale of ruin tells.
Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
The only throb she gives
Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

Hill of Allen. Every stone that sings with memory

“And finally” Spat the sage, “When all these things are passed, when every trial and suffering is over, when at last you believe that you are finally free, then people of Erin, only then will the true depth of my spite take form, if it was the Fianna that upheld ye through your countless years of trial, if it was they and their descendents whose sacrifice finally set you free, then thus I will repay them for their foolish loyalty, what are these baubles of loyalty, this child’s talk of honor, those who in their hearts turn away from the truth and the childish innocence and naivety of the kings of Erin they will share with me the riches of the world, gold beyond any dream you have yet dared embrace, even if these riches are to be the bars of their prison, it is a gilded prison I give them, with such splendor as this what fool could possibly say, that the laughing voice of a happy river or the cool majesty of the stars is of more worth to them, for their crime of selfless loyalty this a bequeath the Fianna of Erin, their fortress of Rath Lugh shall be overthrown, though their stand be valiant none shall come to their aid, except the cream of the cream of the men of Ireland and their sons, and these too shall be cast aside by my minions like the dying jetsam on the unstoppable poisoned tide, this too I give them for their daring to defy, that their beloved Tara shall be cast low before the courts of lesser kings, and none but the few of the few will care enough to pick her up from the mud and serve to heal the dishonor intended for her, the white stones of the Dun Allen shall be cast low, and smashed will be transported where once they were the upholders of the pinnacle of virtue now they will be driven beneath the feet of my slaves, now they will be bound to the service of ever greater torments, now they will be nothing more than the stones of the road of toil, the foundation of the road to IKEA...

The lady Caitlin spoke “you who would afflict my children, gloat at all that is base they have become, reveling in their supposed slavery, laughing as they learn to fear the sun. Will feel the hope of all your tyranny, as the proud nonchalant summer first feels the breath of autumn, time and again the clarion call will sound, and as it falls upon the ears of my children they will rise up in peace, every stone that sings with memory, every smashed site and tomb and barrow will spill forth it’s magics till they wash your evil from my land, and finally the dignity with which my children stood in every generation, will shine once more, and the light of that shining will be the spirit of peace, and this time last forever, I have faith in my children my love will never betray them, I know they will rise against you time and time again and so I have no fear."

Come to the Hill of Allen in Kildare today for a guided tour and an afternoon of story telling. Meeting Point Car Park at Allen Church, Saturday 30th of May 2009 at 2pm.

See also http://www.hillofallen.ie/

Salisbury Plain

And oft a night-fire mounting to the clouds
Reveals the desert and with dismal red
Clothes the black bodies of encircling crowds.
It is the sacrificial altar fed
With living men.

William Wordsworth

The desert and with dismal red

Love Among the Ruins

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop -

II

Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

III

Now -the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)

IV

Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest,
Twelve abreast.

V

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone -

VI

Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.

VII

Now, -the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
Through the chinks -

VIII

Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.

IX

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away -

X

That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.

XI

But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, -and then,
All the men!

XII

When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

XIII

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and north,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force - Gold, of course.

XIV

Oh, heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest.
Love is best!

Robert Browning

Behind your deep eyes

One of the Haniwa

All emotions as well as quiet,
moss-covered Time
are raining behind your face,
which bears the weight
of two thousand years
behind your deep eyes.
Your mouth is tightened
by a great secret.

You do not cry or laugh
or become angry because
you are always crying,
laughing and angry.

You do not have thoughts
or feelings. You absorb those
continuously. Then they
precipitate in you forever.

Born directly out of the earth,
you were a human thing
before human beings.
There was a shortness
in one of God's breaths,

and therefore, incomplete,
you can take pride
in a beautiful simplicity
and health.
You store away the universe.

Shuntaro Tanikawa

(Translated by Diane Furtney and Asuka Itaya)

Old birch trees. Avebury, south-east quadrant

Coming Upon A Stone Circle at Sunset

Old Birch trees, whose white branches weave and sift
The brilliant evening twilight, huddle deep
Around these circled stones. The old grove shifts
As leaves and chilly breezes slightly lift
And rustle. But these silent grey stones keep
Their secrets: no wind reveals, no evening shade distills
Why they stand, encircling each other, in these hills.
With ancient reasons more astute than ours
These stones were brought here, then precisely set.
Each in its place. Time moves, things change, rains pour
Suns rise and set, winter storms blow and roar,
These, encircled, change not. Only men forget.
And now we watch as deepened shadows show
How much we've lost of what our fathers' fathers know.

Juleigh Howard-Hobson

To touch them

Parts of the little church of St Andrew at Greensted in Essex are estimated to be over a thousand years old, and it is possible that the site has been a place of Christian worship for 1,300 years. It is the oldest wooden church in the world and the oldest wooden building in Europe. The fifty one logs that form the walls of the Anglo-Saxon part of the church are of oak, and to touch them is to be transported back to the forests where they once stood and to the people who cut, shaped and used them for their place of worship. Though somewhat outside the scope of Megalithic Poems the Church of St Andrew is of such antiquity that it deserves a mention here.

See also -
http://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/03/greensted-church-essex.html

Of wood well made this wall

Not of stone

Heart of oak, cleft down
from top to bottom.
Fastened well in wooden sill
round side out towards winter's winds
flat side in for warmth.

Adze marks made here by a man
more than a thousand years ago.

Naes staenen!
But of wood well made this wall
Once fastened and thatched
A new hall for a new lord of all.

LS

NB Naes staenen - not of stone.

Badger

1

Pushing the wedge of his body
Between cromlech and stone circle,
He excavates down mine shafts
And back into the depths of the hill.

His path straight and narrow
And not like the fox's zig-zags,
The arc of the hare who leaves
A silhouette on the sky line.

Night's silence around his shoulders,
His face lit by the moon, he
Manages the earth with his paws,
Returns underground to die.

2

An intestine taking in
patches of dog's-mercury,
brambles, the bluebell wood;
a heel revolving acorns;
a head with a price on it
brushing cuckoo-spit, goose-grass;
a name that parishes borrow.

3

For the digger, the earth-dog
It is a difficult delivery
Once the tongs take hold,

Vulnerable his pig's snout
That lifted cow-pats for beetles,
Hedgehogs for the soft meat,

His limbs dragging after them
So many stones turned over,
The trees they tilted.

Michael Longley (For Raymond Piper)

Coetan Arthur Cromlech. St Davids Head, Wales. Image credit Moss

Time’s curtain parts

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.

gjrk

The Knockawaddra Alignment. County Cork, Eire. Image credit gjrk

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.

Andrew Young (1885-1971)

The Long Stones Long Barrow at Beckhampton, Avebury