I passed a window full of televisions
as gray as British bankers,
though imported.
And there in England I saw
the twin towers of its former colony
crumble like toys made of fire
and brimstone,
the enormity of it more
terrible, reduced to fit in a living room.
Were we the only Americans in Bath
that November? So insisted
the taxi driver
winding his way to Stonehenge.
And there stood the stones just over a rise
As if just yesterday, back
in the Iron Age,
some first farmer had tried
to clear a field so he could plant it.
And there they still sat as if over the hill
would yet come a last wagon,
two centuries late,
and men to complain how hard
to break off a piece they could carry away.
For what earthly use was this folly
to the eighteenth century?
There were great houses to be built.
For the newly rich lived lives made sweeter
by ships full of trinkets bound for the Gold Coast
and then, with human cargo,
for the New World.
Bales of cotton staggered
onto Bristol dock—O sprigged muslin-to-be,
O spring frocks! Jane Austen,
does your ghost
ever range this far from Bath on its walks?
If so, I apologize. I wore last year’s coat
that chilly British morning.
It wasn’t enough.
But the stones were dressed
in lichen even older. We walked the circle
of path that kept the henge
safe from our touch.
We walked it again. How many
had died to stand the stones there?
—Debora Greger
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Taxi to Stonehenge
This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 22 Number 2, on page 34
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