Worn white by endless sunbeams

The Open Air

The great stone of a 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 endless sunbeams - the ceaseless flood of light - the sunbeams of the 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?

Richard Jefferies

Silbury time capsule

Hi,

i visited Silbury Hill on Sunday afternoon [19 August 07], it was bedraggled with construction site equipment (inert), workers' portacabin extempore village (no sign of life), persistent drizzle and lots of chalky mud everywhere; the caterpillar diggers have left a wide muddy track all the way round one side of Silbury; there is a forlorn visitors' information point, roadside of the hill, with a flimsy sign fixed to the fence, fluttering in the grey breeze. there are neither visitors nor experts in bright yellow, hard hats, enthusiastically disseminating words of wisdom: the spot is entirely vacant. above the tunnel entrance is marked out - in blue rope - the shape of a long subsidence, running up the hill, directly over the tunnel. before the ominous-looking, shuttered entrance to the re-opened tunnel stands a motionless mechanical digger, apparently abandoned? the entire site is eerily silent and resembles more the messy aftermath to some awful catastrophe, rather than the sprightly prospect of an efficient EH project, so deftly filmed for PR posterity several years ago, when the initial steps were being taken to stabilise the hill, and ultimately restore it? where are the cameras, state-of-art technology, helicopters, snappy press releases, smart presenters and television experts now? what is happening at Silbury? what is happening to Silbury?!

:(

Ric

ps. i wrote to Eric/Lord Avebury - he advises everyone concerned to write, phone or email English Heritage to object to their plan to bury a 'time capsule' inside Silbury Hill.

Where prayers are left to bleed. Image credit Tim Norris

A Means To An End II

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

slumpy & Joy Division

Stonehenge. Image credit Snap

Solace in Stone

Seek them out, search out the Ancient Ones. Stones of Salutation. Solstice and Symmetry
Stones of Mystery. Millenniums and Magnetism. Stones of Ancients. Augurs and Alignments
Stones of Loneliness. Lunar and Leys. Stones of Ghosts. Gnomic and Geometry
Stones of Destiny. Druids and Direction. Stones of Elementals. Equinox and Equations
Stones of Ceremony. Celts and Chronology. Stones of Hypocrisy. Hedonists and Harmonics
Find their Sanctuary, find their Solace. Pitted with time, grey and ochre patched
Yet smooth as silk where hands have rubbed. In fields, woods, valleys, bog, bracken and bramble
Standing, fallen, broken, smashed by the Church. No matter their magic felt through centuries and time
For they have seen death, life and the stars. Sit in their majesty, turn and look back
See the horizons. Mothers, mapped out. Look on in wonder, best all alone
For then you will find Solace in Stone

T J Ackley

Silbury from Avebury steeple by William Stukeley

Silbury Speaks

Once, men knew no science
But saw how things worked,
Couldn’t fly to the moon
Yet possessed it,
Never dreamt the world was round
But knew it was whole.

Such men raised me with those simple tools
And here I stand
A monument, magnificent,
To simple men and simple ways
That tells an ancient Truth
That knowing much is knowing less.

Why then did you not
Simply protect me?

Erich Thrupp

The Long Man of Wilmington: Image credit Sorcha

Windover

I guard the gateway
Hold two spears
Or staffs
Or rakes
Through the years
The truth has misted

Clearly a man
Though my hips might say other
Wise Mother I might be
God to many
Most certainly

Yet as you approach me
Kerbstones are all you will see
Industrial covering for the mystery

Once I was the Green Man
Seen only at dawn
Upon my Down
By Mrs. Downs
Of that village below

Or as the snow melted
Upon me
Before around me
Yet I became harder to see

So they bricked me in
That I might remain seen
Though so faint in the earth
My left foot turned east

Was my face lost then?
Did spear become stick?
Did they add hips?
Did I lose a dick?

And then in your sixties
Brick became slab
Call it drab
If you like
My essence
Still lies beneath.

Atop my hill
Lie two barrows
One Long and for many
One round and for a chief

The long one it points
Directly at my head
And however many lie within
They lie undisturbed
In a grave long enough
To be mine
Approached by a steep Cursus
From which to watch Sirius rise

The round one
Lies in line with my body
Abused and raided by an antiquary
One Mr. Mantell
Yet still with its majesty
Though no longer a king

Two ancient cultures
Lined graves up on me
And five thousand years back
From where cars now park
On a cold winter’s night
Orion the Hunter
Dressed in his stars
Would have walked my horizon

Am I he?
Am I the Stonehenge Sun God?
Cernunnos of the Celts?
Or Caesar of the coin?
Or Alfred’s estate marker?
Or Sampson, carved by monks
On their day off?

I have been much to many
Else I would have died
I may be much to you
Or just a man in the side
Of a hill

Still
Yet on a mound
‘Neath a chalk-pit next to me
People now gather
To give thanks to their mother
And father, the Earth
And to honour their gods
And for what it is worth

I thank you

For you sustain me
And I shall be whatever you wish
Until the Downs crumble
And fish swim above me
Many years from now
When we shall all lie
Underneath sea or sky

For as rock became human
So too human stone
The cycle is endless
For you and I belong to the Land
And to it we return
Whether short or Long Man.

Cursuswalker
Lammas 2001

Silbury: Image credit Robert M Williams

Something beyond the books

There is something beyond the philosophies in the light, in the grass-blades, the leaf, the grasshopper, the sparrow on the wall. Some day the great and beautiful thought which hovers on the confines of the mind will at last alight. The whole sky is full of abounding hope. Something beyond the books, that is consolation.

Richard Jefferies

Max Gate: Image credit Gerald Ponting

The Shadow on the Stone

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)

English Heritage's monorail on Silbury Hill: June 2007

One eye on your career

You said you'd be our champion, a power to our cause
To stand like stones, upright and still, an influential force
Yet when we asked, our hands outstretched, your sense of duty failed
You turned your back, ignored our pleas, our trust in you derailed

You promised us your guardianship, is this how a guard behaves?
Can't you feel ten thousand corpses turning in their graves?
No passion in your governorship, a task but nothing more
Then ditch the burden as your predecessor did before

Oh, to see each promise kept, not cast aside with fear
No 'popular decisions' with one eye on your career
Just sense and sensitivity for all that could be lost
Preserving England's heritage, no matter what the cost

slumpystones

English Heritage's Silbury Hill 'Conservation' Project: May 2007

The New Seven Wonders?

The New Seven Wonders?
But EH's blunders
Will drive a big road through them all
Put some tat in the mound
Don't disclose what we found
Stick a campsite in Durrington Walls

If the doorway's too narrow
We'll widen the barrow
To let wheelchairs get inside West Kennet
And Avebury's ditch oughtta
Be filled up with water
We'll ignore when you shout "Gordon Bennet!"

Seven Wonders? That many?
We don't think we've got any
That haven't been paved and restored
With EH's protection
And metal detection
There's so little to add to the hoard

Could we settle for two?
Silbury, Avebury too
Maybe Stonehenge if we can agree
On the council decision
Of a two-mile incision
To bury the A303

Stanton Drew-Vegas weddings
Slaughter Stone fake beheadings
And souvenir shops full of bones
And the rich men in hearses
Can park near the Cursus
And bury their dead at the stones

So it's Wessex-orama
A crisis, no drama
A Wonderworld built on the plain
Where the visitors enter
The visitors' centre
And see everything from a train

slumpystones

Newgrange: County Meath, Ireland