Four blocks of un-masoned stone, rough-quarried limestone, oblong, huge, waiting for language’s child’s hand to play with them into meaningful array,

or just play.

One stands
three lie.

Another stands,
an upright couple,
a couple lying down.

Marry me
stone keeps saying,
marry me, wed me
back into earth

for I weary sometimes
of sunlight’s games,
sleep with me.

Are the down two
supine or prone?
Hard to tell
when all sides are the same,

hard to tell as music—
is music face down when we hear it
or staring up at us
eyes wide open
saying Marry me
over and over?

Now all four are standing,
Stone Age temple
you can her them laughing
at our innocent religions

when all they ever have to do
is stand there.
Or lie down
as before,

I’d call them prone,
hiding their faces
from us if they could,
but they forget:
stone is all face.

Nothing hid.
Are they on a meadow
or a hilltop?
You decide,
you’re the one who sees them now,
I’m just trying to remember.

And does it even matter
how big they are,
I see freight-cars
you see cardboard
little boxes, cookies
could come in them,
or a dozen pencils
(remember them?
wooden stocks with words in them)

what does size matter
except to the patient earth
that maybe vaguely yearns
to have its children back again.

You never know
with blocks of rock,
Stonehenge laughing at us
for five thousand years,
and in the Anatolian tepes
older stones are coming back,
shouldering their hills aside,
calling out for human help
to be out here again with us.

But who are we
that stone should care?

Four blocks to play with
and you’ll never finish,

permutations of position,
and the way their shadows
join and part and sway
all through the livelong day,

maybe shadow music
is enough to see,
how identical objects
cast so many different shapes.

Abashed by truth
we stand around
staring at the stones,
wait for sunrise or solstice
or anything we could link
with what we think

or think the stones are doing.
What do stones do?

But I too want to see them standing,
standing or lying,
thick in daylight, real,
teach me real!

I want to be alone with them,
just me and them
and their hill or meadow
or jungle or whatever,
what do I know
of where stones live?

Just let me be alone with them
an hour, or even less,
long enough to catch my breath,
steep hill, wide meadow,
and stand there,
try to be as still as they are
and try to mean as much
as a man can of what they mean.

6 October 2021