Littlestone
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Re: The Menhirs Secret
Jan 07, 2008, 22:15
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Thanks Tim - duly added to stack (and if you've got an image to go with it I'll put both on the blog).
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moss
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Ancient Monuments
Jan 08, 2008, 16:32
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though in truth I'm not sure it is the title.. late 20th C poet John Ormond
Turn and look back. You'll see horizons
Much like the ones that they saw,
The tomb-builders, milleniums ago;
The channel scutched by rain, the same old
Sediment of dusk, winter returning.
Dolerite, porphyry, gabbro fixed
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 await.
Lookin for something else, I came once
To a cromlech in a field of barley.
Whoever farmed that field had true
Priorities. He sowed good grain
To the tomb's doorstep. No path
Led to the ancient death. The capstone,
Set like a cauldron on three legs,
Was marooned by the swimming crop.
A gust and the cromlech floated,
Motionless at time's moorings.
ref; The Presence of the Past - Jeremy Hooker
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Littlestone
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Re: Ancient Monuments
Jan 08, 2008, 17:09
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Thanks moss but I'm seriously confused here. tiompan mentioned John Ormond's poem from Definition of a waterfall last May -http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/forum/?thread=23046&message=507101
Does Ormond's poem have more than the four verses you quote because 'Thom's poem' has thirteen.
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moss
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Re: Ancient Monuments
Jan 08, 2008, 18:45
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Littlestone wrote:
Ah yes I see, Definitions of a Waterfall is a book of poems by Ormond, whether my four verses are a whole poem I don't know..
"Ancient Monuments" is in the book p29, according to the notes.
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Littlestone
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Edited Jan 09, 2008, 23:10
Faintly, and as if from a great distance
Jan 09, 2008, 22:15
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Faintly, and as if from a great distance.*
Fall steps along the hallowed, hollowed whitened path
that began four millennia ago
and end today
in a pile of rusted iron struts
and rotting Merewether timbers.
Cast sarsen souls on pallets
of 21st century dust.
Words fail
voids fill
then open up on another dismal collapsing surface
of another dark day of dismal lies.
And all the time they paint another rosy watercolour
of consolidation and restoration and not-in-the-book conservation.
Epithets for the spineless.
Phoney photographs for the future.
While a thousand plastic bags pad out their stupidities.
LS
* Thanks to gjrk for this line.
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gjrk
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Edited Jan 10, 2008, 00:49
Re: Faintly, and as if from a great distance
Jan 10, 2008, 00:05
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Very flattered. It feels like looking at a Rolls Royce and knowing that I put the back axle in, or maybe the first pull of the curtains on a sunny day! Well done Littlestone.
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Littlestone
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Re: Faintly, and as if from a great distance
Jan 10, 2008, 10:30
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Very flattered. It feels like looking at a Rolls Royce and knowing that I put the back axle in, or maybe the first pull of the curtains on a sunny day!
Flattered in return ;-) You've a nice way with words gjrk - have you written any poems on the megalithic theme?
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gjrk
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Re: Faintly, and as if from a great distance
Jan 11, 2008, 00:04
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After a prompt like that maybe I should see what's in me! Be prepared for a Frenhofer of a gestation period though...
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Littlestone
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Edited Jan 11, 2008, 15:04
Re: Faintly, and as if from a great distance
Jan 11, 2008, 08:50
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After a prompt like that maybe I should see what's in me!
Go for it!
Meanwhile, your first line of the above is now up on http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/ Please let me know if you want to change the name to whom it's credited (ie from gjrk to your name or a penname).
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moss
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Re: Ancient Monuments
Jan 11, 2008, 15:40
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moss wrote: Littlestone wrote:
Ah yes I see, Definitions of a Waterfall is a book of poems by Ormond, whether my four verses are a whole poem I don't know..
"Ancient Monuments" is in the book p29, according to the notes.
Nailing it on the head, sent an email to Professor Hooker this morning, this is what I got back.....
"The quotation you ask about is from John Ormond's poem 'Ancient Monuments'. I don't have the Ormond poem with me, but my recollection is that it is dedicated to Alexander Thom. That would account for it being ascribed to Thom on a megalithic forum. It is also just possible that Ormond quotes a phrase or a few words from Thom in the poem. But the verses are certainly from Ormond's poem."
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