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The Past is a Different Country

Stuart Butler

Monday, April 7th, 2008

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Digging down deep, a trench for spuds, not warfare,
I catch a glint of subterranean sunlight,
A signal from the past, from somewhere
Far beyond sight, mortality, skin and bone,
A piece of flint, there amongst the limestone.
I rest on my spade, bend down, pick up and ponder:
How did you get here? Not by nature or ice-girt glacier,
But dropped, perhaps, by some ancient trader,
Travelling back from Wiltshire’s stone circles,
(Forest Green away to Swindon in the Beaker)
With a basketful of sharp-shard arrowheads,
Way before the Romans brought their roads
Around Silbury Hill and straight west along Ermine Street:
And there you are, a message from the Ridgeway,
2, 500 years old and 50 long trod pre-historic miles,
Down there where the Home Guard earlies will grow.
Who says the past is a different country?

© Stuart Butler

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/the-past-is-a-different-country/