Ancient Warriors

Ancient Warriors of these hills
Dome dwellings were crafting
Bent with their fingers skill
Which formed also
The land as it does lie
Well before the plough
Now obscured to modern eye

Yet what I was taught was it were
Harsh barbaric trash that lot
Yet to me they are a past to future
Calling to task that's what

Let us go with them through ages
Seen in time's omnipotent eye
(That knows all beneath
this sun sentinelled sky)
To find a human mirth
A great girth of worth
This hilltop laughs
For me it's people still walk the earth

So for those who laugh at me
"A right one" they say
I may do rites
But left is a much maligned way
Yet where 'ere I go
I'll tap bardic flow
And look with an eye
That once I know skried
A landscape

I dream'd I'd seen scenes
Of their houses and homes
-a hundred host
I saw all sorts I'm sure
Full grown youth elder and child living close
Encamped in the land that they loved the most
Calling to me now
As I sit with crow
And my cloak opens up
This vista to you
Once peopled these hills
Once peopled again
Build harmoniously now
For foundations remain
Yes again once again
Comes the timeless refrain

For the time is now when bards wake from death
Where inquisition fires took up our mortal flesh
Yet from where we were burned
That time has it turned
And we must emerge from our forced sleep
No longer held back on the pain of that sorrow
But skywarding on with a song of tomorrow
It's a song that is old and it's one that I borrowed
It's a message of hope on an old rotten road
It's a vow that is taken and not about faking
It's about healing the stealing of those Inca's gold

Because I tell most lies
My lyre will spell it out
-from where we began
See through such eyes as we have discussed
See through the surrounding golfcourse (such I curse)
To one metropolis top
Megalithic citadel of one common lot
Revealed as words unveil the trail
From past to future this culture hails

Our purposes now must intwine to survive
It's climate change surely that's showing us why
It's now and it's here and everyplace
Watch now as this all shows a face

And if we can attend we'll work out the how
With action make means to end all this now
Re-people the hills with harmonious homes
I know the council
Would quickly evict all the domes
But here's my own future vision
Once a split second glimpse
Of how we can be living in synergetic style digs
That fit in with our needs not exascerbate greeds
That have got us all into these perilous fields

Once an atom is split
There is no denying it
Yet Lovelock chains Gaia
To the nuclear path
Dares not to say that this age can pass
When machines exponential need for more power
Is our only course in this deadly hour

What! Atomics for fuel who's fooling who?
We don't need that much yet more subtle a touch
Livin' in a hut
It's a hint
With wind and solar
If we catch gust and glint
That's spoken out loud by this common bard
and other brave questors many at large
Are making brave gestures to sort out this farce
I know that what's done could be said to be sparse
But vision seeded this poem instructs it will last
And we shall be freed from the national grid's clasp.

Go then span out some blessed plot
It's not something one has got
It's not something one can own
But some kind of magic matriculation we are shown
It is granted because we are born from it
I've seen it visioned and the vision fits
Into the hills environment
I know there are those who will resent
But that world is vulnerable stuck in cement
The enclosures act
borders tax and war
What can a poor man say? Well
Ancient hills speak of another way

So from a vision seeded in my nineteenth year
Much has grown in this time it has appeared
Dear people it's a common future dream
In the face of ten thousand ten million
Techno dislogical nightmare schemes

For poesy and technos in the original tonue
Are poetry and technology as they now are sung
Are essences made from intellect's raw hewn hearts
Newly divorced from their fable
In the philosophic cradle of ancient greek minds
The effect of such sages through subsequent ages
Was though to be good but has prooven unkind

For it formed a disunion polarized human kin
From inside the mind so to outside at large
Sad society's wars violent cycles cause
Making rife the broken lives
That translates into sharper knives
Longer stronger better till gunpowder bangs
And atomic dust is result of our crimes

It's a logical step
So here's one to bless
I suggest it is best
To take the best of the rest
Attest we have raped
With the worst of machines
Acknowledge we also
Can clean up these scenes

A conquest internal to external heal
A radical reach out one we can feel
For technos is not wrong or in itself bad
But balance to poesy once we all had

Who can reach out o'er this dying land
Who can draw forest from desert sand
Who can resolve conflict be not fearful of love
So we can be happy as below so above
A culture is here and is speaking so clear
Of mending and blending
Not of bleeding and bombing

It's a call for all bards to speak for the earth
An action all healing not a death dearthing dirge

We are human kin of the eternal race
We have inherant poise love compassion and grace
Beautiful lives if we'll give them a go
I hope you've enjoyed my first bardic show





(Written during and in the two weeks after a journey up to Mutter's Moor, behind Peak Hill cliffs in Sidmouth Devon in 2006).