A thing of the past. Image credit W Byrne and Medland: 1786

The motors and the constant traffic

....the sense of solitary grandeur which arose as one came slowly up across the wide deserted plain to stand alone beneath the huge trilithons, is a thing of the past. The military camps, the motors and the constant traffic along the dusty road, the wire enclosure, necessary as one must acknowledge it to be, and above all, the offensive pay-shed, so placed as to spoil and vulgarise the approach by its natural avenues, have robbed the temple of all its old romance.

J P Williams-Freeman

Choirokoitia, Cyprus: circa 9,000bce. Image credit Marcobadotti

People of Choirokoitia

Nine thousand years ago you lived here
in little round houses surrounded by little narrow alleyways
connecting each of your homes one to another.
Alleyways no wider
than the outstretched arms of a modern man.

But then you stood no taller
than one of our children of ten years or so stands now
and lived no longer than our middle years.
It was a time before the thought
of clay pots had even crossed your minds.

You ate as well as we however
perhaps even better.
Pistachios, figs, olives and prunes.
Deer, sheep, goats and pigs.

Unpackaged and unpaid for
taken from the hills all around you.
Water from your streams
fish from your rivers and from the sea.

Choirokoitia, Choirokoitia
people of Choirokoitia.
I walk along your ancient pathways
and peer through your ancient windows and doorways.
What am I looking for?

Simplicity perhaps.
No doubt your loves and losses were as rich and as sad as ours
but at least you knew one another
walking from house to house
through field and wood
laughing and arguing
living life to the full.

Nine thousand years on no-one knows anyone anymore.
You would not like it here people of Choirokoitia.
The sound of your rivers and steams have gone.
The sea supports a flotsam of rubbish you could never imagine.

Gone is the quietness that you knew.
Gone now your harmony with the changing of the year.
Gone too your finger upon the pulse of life
and your upturned hands when life lies cold.

Choirokoitia, Choirokoitia
people of Choirokoitia.
If I could travel back to be with you I would.
I would happily forfeit half my life to walk with you
picking olives and figs along the way
listening to the far-off sounds of the sea
and the mountain streams as they tumble and fall
around your village of little round houses
and little narrow alleyways.

LS

It seemed to whisper Quietness

Three Counsellors

It was the fairy of the place,
Moving within a little light,
Who touched with dim and shadowy grace
The conflict at its fever height.

It seemed to whisper 'Quietness,'
Then quietly itself was gone:
Yet echoes of its mute caress
Were with me as the years went on.

It was the warrior within
Who called 'Awake, prepare for fight:
Yet lose not memory in the din:
Make of thy gentleness thy might:

'Make of thy silence words to shake
The long-enthroned kings of earth:
Make of thy will the force to break
Their towers of wantonness and mirth.'

It was the wise all-seeing soul
Who counselled neither war nor peace:
'Only be thou thyself that goal
In which the wars of time shall cease.'

George William Russell (1867-1935)

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