Giants

This piece was a response to several poems about the Long Man of Wilmington, on the South Downs. I grew up in another place, far from there, but also on chalk, so I imagined a conversation between the Long Man and the Cerne Abbas giant, talking about their longevity, and their forgotten cousins.

Giants

Cousin!
Are you well?
I have here walked,
Long-legged leagues from chalk to chalk,
And bear thee greeting.

Staff-bearer, weapon-dancer,
Underneath the roiling rainclouds prancer,
Shall we fight?
Can your staff, or spear
(Or frame from within whose door you peer?)
Match my knurled and knobbly cudgel’s might?

Guardian!
In your deeping dell.
I have here walked,
Fleet-footed, flying over farm and fell,
And bear thee warning.

Gate-keeper, hill-sleeper,
Astride your dun-side portal-keeper,

What have you seen?
Did you see the men of bone,
Who dug with the horns of beasts for glassy stones,
When they made you?
Or did you peer with twinkling eye,
(Under rainclouds that go ever racing by),
A man in black with book clutched nigh,
Who re-laid you?

Wanderer!
Chalk-rider, dream-strider,
Lost in time and thought and memory-rider.
Shall we leave?

There are horses enough to bear us yonder,
So that in ages hence some folk will ponder,
Where did they go?
Those gods of Cerne, and Down, and Plymouth Hoe,
On steeds from Westbury, Cherhill, and red Tysoe,
Leaving hill, and hump, and bluff all bare,

And when they ask,
“Were they ever truly there?”,
The hills will rumble and give voice to answer,
That if they miss Heilith and Woden Weapon-Dancer,
Seeing nothing where their bones were laid,
And wished they lingered on their banks of earth,
The next god they make should instead be made,
Of something more stern than mossy, chalky, turf.