Poetic Fire – Song & Satire
I’ve traversed the borders of madness
In four dimensions of dance
Probed the horizons of Kismet
And suckled the memory of chance.
But the quanta have kept all their secrets
Forced me back into their play
Of simple, organic-becoming
In the three dimensions of clay.
And it came to pass in the second year when Cameron and Clegg were rulers of Britain and Barry Ben Parsons was Governor of Torridge that the people groaned and e-wailed under the burdens that the usurers and tax collectors had laid upon them.
And they murmured amongst themselves saying
‘Our rulers have privatised the granary and are rigging the price of corn, and have stolen even that which we have saved up for our old age.
Yeah, our land is being stolen from us by mamaunders who destroy our fields and orchards and pull down our cottages so that they might build palaces for strangers who know not the way of our fathers.’
And the people said unto themselves ‘Why are we taxed so harshly? Where are these taxes going but to fill the pockets of the King’s officers and usurers?’
Now the word of the Lord was scarce in those days, and the people did not cry out unto Him, for everyone did what was right in their own eyes and went a-whoring after the gods of celebrity and strictly come money-making.
And likewise the priests followed not the Lord’s command to chide the people and the rulers of the land for their worship of mammon. Nay, but they raged amongst themselves saying
‘Shall a woman have equal authority with a man? If we are to be holy should we not first have a right understanding of what men do with their dangly bits?’
And there was much confusion and gnashing of teeth.
And there was at that time an Irsharite dwelling in thelandofNortham, a scribe given to strange outbursts and dreaming.
And behold, he looketh out of his chamber and saw the desolation of the land, how the trees had been cut down and the fields abandoned such that many villas could be built upon them, yeah, even unto the edges of the seashore.
Yeah, and how the poor could not even buy a small hovel wherein to lay their heads, but were forced to toil unceasingly to pay rent to rich landlords while many great villas lay empty.
And the word of the Lord came to this man whose name was Jeremiah and sayeth unto him
‘gird up thy loins and get thee unto the wilderness that lieth beyond Skern, and stand though upon the great ridge that overlooketh theSevernSea.’
And Jeremiah did as the Lord commanded him, and went forth in his transit into the wilderness and stood upon the great ridge.
Then the Lord sayeth unto him ‘Lift up thine eyes and look unto the West; what seest thou?’
And Jeremiah replied ‘ I see great towers Lord, like that ofBabelproudly reaching forth to heaven, and no wildlife remaineth there.’
Then the Lord sayeth unto him ‘Thou seest rightly. They are an abomination unto me and unto the spirit of my servant Kipling. They and their ilk are an offence to all who love justice and the beauty of my biosphere.
Therefore get thee to that place and say unto the builders thereof, ‘behold, thus sayeth the Lord; I am bringing a great wind from the North and a great tempest of seas to destroy these abominations that thou has set up. And there shall not be one stone left upon another.’
And the Lord said ‘Yeah, even this ridge upon which thou standeth shall be swept away. Yeah, the waters shall cover even this wilderness, and they that strike their balls over it shall do so no more. Verily verily I say unto thee, ships shall once more lay anchor beneath the shadow of Boot Hill. Let he who has ears to hear let him hear.’
And Jeremiah fell on his knees and rent his anorak, and cried out with a loud voice saying
‘Lord, what of the righteous; wilt thine anger be kindled against them also? What of the Irsharites and Richmondites, the Insodomites, Weird-giffodites and those that live nigh upon the way that leadeth by the house of Knapp and Hubberstone, who abhor mightily those who obey not the covenant of their ancestors, but go a-whoring after mammon. Wilt thou destroy them also?’
And the Lord took Jeremiah up in vision and showed him the world that he had made.
And Jeremiah beheld the burning forests and dying seas, and the concrete that covered the earth that men had laid down over it, and the pollution that obscured the heavens and the abominations that maketh desolation.
And Jeremiah was struck dumb and laid himself down prostrate on the pebbles and wept.
Then the Lord spake unto him again after this manner
‘ If they repent and turn away from their greed, and honour truth and justice in their scales and in their council chambers, and look everyone to their neighbour and the stranger that is within their gates, and turn once again to the land that I have given them to care for it, then will I begin to open up the fist of my wrath and lay my open hand of healing upon them.’
Then Jeremiah rose up and mounted his transit, and made haste back to his chamber and wrote down all that the Lord had told unto him to say unto the rulers of the land in which he dwelt.
But they harkened not unto him.
Apparently, as hunter gatherers we were camping, temporarily of course, near Zennor – and I had an idea, a purely artistic inspiration you understand, and said to my small group of skin-clad clansmen ‘why don’t we hack out four 20-ton slabs of granite, drag them up here on to this hill, put them upright in the ground, stick another 35-ton capstone on top, cover the whole thing in earth, and bury me underneath – when I’m dead of course’: I was feeling a bit coitish!
A few years later, as we moved around after the wildlife, gathering herbs and honing our survival skills, I had another inspiration. ‘I’ve heard a rumour’ I said to my clan ‘or it might have been a dream or a vision: this plateau we’re camping on looks a bit bare, and I think it could do with a cwmbrian update. In the mountains beyond theSevernSea, I’ve heard tell there is some quite lovely bluestone-granite. It’s only a little over 200 miles from there to here; let’s travel over and hack out a few lintels and uprights – needn’t be more than 30 or 40 tons each, and drag them back here, set them up on-end in a circle, and hang the rest around the top. We all know what can be done with a few flints, antler-heads and sledges; it will look incredibly impressive, particularly at the solstice. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit bored hanging around just hunting and gathering. You never know, such a ritualistic expression might catch on throughout these islands; our descendants could be inspired by our venture, and take a bit of time out from hunting and gathering, and meet up here for festivals.
About 1,500 years later, sitting around a camp fire, a man suddenly declared ‘I have a dream’. His clan listened awe-struck. ‘You see that great hill over there; just imagine it furrowed with trenches all around it, about 80 feet deep with stockades along the top, and a maze-like entrance. If our enemies threaten us, we could drive our sheep and cattle up there and barricade ourselves in. We could be safe.’ ‘But it’s over one kilometre long,’ (to use a later description of length) a young man gasped ‘and we are only a small tribe, and, ah, ah – what about water? And why would they attack us anyway? Many are still hunting and gathering, though some of us are growing a few crops and settling down a bit’! ‘Have you no imagination? We will not undertake this work just for ourselves, but for our descendants, who will have multiplied in number and maybe attacked by bigger hordes of warriors; as for water, we will dig out dew-ponds so we and our animals can drink. Maybe those who come after us will want to dig a deep shaft down to the water table.’
And so it was done. Such is the power of imagination. And it did catch on; hundreds of menhirs/quoits and stone circles were erected by hunter-gatherers, and later at least 900 hill forts were constructed inBritainby primitive agriculturalists.
And even later, the BBC made various re-enactments to demonstrate how our ancestors lived – – because now with our greater scientific understanding we can actually look back in time with all our accumulated wisdom and demonstrate how these primitive people evolve from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists to modern, sophisticated entertainment addicts. So, they constructed their idea of a bronze-age village, and invited several ‘battery -henned brains’ to leave their living units for a week or so and try and become hunter-gatherers, living off the land (with not a little help from a survival expert)! Apart from a minor escape to buy a Mars Bar, they existed on the presumed diet of their ancestors – rabbit, nuts, seeds and berries etc.
Strangely, no-one thought of hacking out, shaping, moving and erecting 20-40 ton blocks of granite, and digging out hillsides with flint and antler.
For today, we know we are far more evolved, rational, sophisticated and non-superstitious as we blissfully look forward to our own significant solstice.