Artifact March 2010
Stonehenge
By: John Cardoza
So it was that Merlin floated these stones from a distant place,
floated them faerie-like through the mists, and set them here. None
saw their shaping nor felt the ache of time. None heard the wind.
He built it because he could, built it to constrain fears
of civilization unbidden; built it to confound new masters
with the power of mist and shadow, the perplexity of dreams.
It was cause for wonder when the Romans came to build an empire
they thought would last a thousand years, far longer than simple stone,
longer even than legend. They came as conquerors; or so they thought
and so many feared. It would be an easy task for road-builders
with their iron tools; with their chariots and charts and columned temples.
They arrived on our shores as confident as we had been, and just as sure.
We watched from the mist and from the shadows. They think to change
everything, we whispered. What they don’t understand, they’ll destroy –
or love. There is a little difference. So we taught them what we knew.
We taught them to dream. We taught them to hold us gently before
they slept, before they faded away. Before they left.
Those that remained would remember what power is:
Power remains in the mist, and the loss whispered in loneliness
and desire and lovers’ touch. As cold as that. Not the stones.
Not the stones. They could be measured. They could diminish.
They could be marred. Their weight alone meant nothing.
Nor even the precision which would point to that star or another,
and beckon the sun again and again with a circumlocution of sculpted prayer.
The stones are held by the emptiness between; they haven’t mortar to bind them,
only the weight of their shadows. We trace a circle where power meets power
and cannot bend. We walk among the stones. Time collapses while we mark the lines,
find the stars, predict the solstice; we wait where Merlin stood,
and Rome in all her might, who thought that power would keep them whole.
Who thought that power might keep them safe.