...after visiting Celtic stone circles
around Land's End, in Cornwall, England...
We, it seems, not unlike other creatures,
inherit longings that invade
complacency. Birds sense the mortal
grip of frost before it has them by the throat;
whales commence their exodus when ice
suspends its truce. Migration of necessity
does not explain the human quest -
the passion to transcend, risk all,
be challenged or consumed by this.
An echo resonates in us from not-so-distant
ancestors - the sound of stone first striking
stone, to modify, to shape. The mystic tribes
who raised Stonehenge, astronomers
par excellence, calibrated heaven by means
since considered primitive. Yet their unerring
expertise gave access to precise
details of cosmic cycles central to
their consciousness - phenomena they
took pains to observe with awe, and celebrate.
Now, entering the circles of their arcane
and pragmatic rites, one senses chill Europa's
spirit in the enigmatic calcite; conjures up
geomancers, diviners of magnetic lines,
and realises the longings earthed in monoliths
are still with us. Celtic scholars were required
to cite, in daily litany, details of the solar month,
the moon's phase at each given point, the motion
of the tides, the changing angles of the azimuth,
and calendars of feasts, with variations.
The lunar cycle's intricacies, known to us
through stone inscriptions, intimate as bone
to their initiates, were not disdained.
When senses are deprived of sunlight,
deep in earth or far beyond it, bio-rhythms
synchronise to lunar time, old sources claim.
The future's schoolchildren will study
vast cosmologies; geography of Mars
and Mercury; the chemistry of Venus.
They will perhaps scan new accounts
of astro-archaeology, and through galactic
pioneers recapture what the Druids knew.
There will be images the Stonehenge rituals
held inklings of, perhaps only through psychedelic
trances, herbally induced: visions of star-nurseries,
virtual journeys in deep space, sightings of other
planetary moons they barely dreamed of…
Nostalgia, an outmoded word, will not suffice
for future use. Fairytales, if they survive, will
substitute bird-maids for mermaids.
Virtual emotions will emerge and dominate,
displacing atavistic yearnings for the lost,
the unattained. Those in extra-planetary
colonies will recall Earth as some lost Eden -
paradise whose gates are sealed to those
who left. But they may become heirs
to a utopia as yet unguessed, if only they
transcend earth's legacy of inhumanity.
I travel little-known trails, from Celtic mists
to cosmic blaze - a Druid's grandchild reaching
for the stars, possessed by dreams of space…