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From Mga Biyahe, Mga Estasyon
MgaBiyaheMgaEstasyon.jpg
From Journeys, Junctions
(a collection of travel poems)
Stonehenge

I chose this instead of Windsor or My Fair Lady
To measure, with some exactitude, our distance from ourselves

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For after some three thousand years, 
From rim of wheel or ring of fire, we have raised

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Monuments of steel and glass, towering edifices, 
On every shore found by every fish that ever jumped out of water. 

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But, O Stonehenge, great gallery of stone!
Monument of a hundred and one first-born chunk of rock face!

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And our forefathers, great little giants
With the strength of a thousand dinosaurs and the knowledge of gods!

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They carved them out, said the leaflet, these monstrous dolmens
Of adobe, each a thousand times their size and weight, 

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Pushing and pulling each over ridge and slope
Across thick gorse or pine forest, across dense grove

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More magic ingredient enriched their meals, 
What wondrous juice from a thousand vines spiked their wines, 

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To stouten breast and toughen limb
To carve and move and stand these stones

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That until now endure and reign in sun or rain
More than half are gone, or have been stolen, some

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Are fallen among grass, but the rest 
Are upright—like warriors

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Standing their ground until felled
And so our materialistic mind insists: 

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What drove the stone age consciousness
To devote life and lives to these over a thousand years? 

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And we explain to ourselves with a little raised eyebrow; 
These are ancient altars to the sun or sacred burial ground

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Governed by the same primal principle that built the pyramids and temples
From Egypt, Sumer, and Greece to Chile and Mexico, 

Stonehenge at sunrise
during the Summer Solstice
StonehengeDuringSummerSolstice.jpg.webp
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