BLUESTONES

From the sacred mountains of the farthest west,
split from rocky tor with water, wood, and fire
we took them; asking their forgiveness,
we dragged them.  At every famished stop
we bound our bleeding hands, mended ropes
gave thanks for our progress, and pressed on.

We raised them up like towers
inside our ditch and bank, a circle-casting,
their flinty fingers pointing silently
at the standstill moon.  Gathered there among them
we bid the spirits of our homeland come
and live among us, no longer godless here.

Their fresh-hewn surface sparkles like midnight;
galaxies garnered there on every plane,
the universe reflected.  And at the healing time
the people come with hammerstones and break
a fragment of the cosmos, for its power.
As the spirits grant these morsels of themselves
the stones ring out their voices, as they do in Preseli.
This is how we did the bidding of the Gods.