A poem today inspired by the Sacred Wonders of Britain documentary on BBC2 this morning, the Neolithic practice of digging for flint, although flint is plentiful on the surface, so it was speculated that it was a partly reverential act. I was reminded of the song Rawhide by Scott Walker, a song about Neolithic life.
Subterrain
With our picks of antler
we bite at the chalk flesh
of the earth, down
we go
removing the barbs
of black flint
which hurt it.
Lit by the sun's eye
we descend, man, woman,
then, like a hand sideways
into finger-holes of blackness
to feel damp chalk,
and glass flint.
We breathe the cool air
of these stone lungs
and become the earth,
air and ground together,
nurses
to tend the universe
as the universe tends us.
