Dunadd

In the dead eye of winter
When you sought a place of vantage,
Shelter and strength you built into stones.
On a fastness of rock
Over marsh and brack you held dominion,
Watched without rest from a nest of slabs,
Let none assail the fortress of your night.

For summers, for lifetimes,
The unremembered years you spent protected
By the encircling walls,
By the shoulders of earth
And the unseen roots of stone.
This home, this birthplace of kings,
Island in the shifting tides below,
Contained a primitive, familiar masonry,
The mainstay of hard and necessary lives.

The ages came and went like waves.
Domains were held or taken
Or changed in shape
Like shingle beaches as the seasons turn.
The beating seas fell back across the boggy land
While the river round your summit’s feet
Twisted in a serpent’s dance
Down the centuries of your kings and people.

In time all strongholds can be broken:
The treasures that they keep can lose their lustre,
What was once defended comes to be unthreatened
Or falls to unseen dangers that the years prepare.
What futures did you see across the sedges
As you kept your vigil under lowering skies
When lordship, fiefdom, strength and hardship
Held such permanence of meaning
That they should outlast the weatherbeaten hills?
How could you foresee our helpless present
Or see your crumbling home a ruin,
A vague reminder of forgotten days,
Barren stones picked over in a moments pause?

The thoughtless feet that stumble where you watched
Possess no strength you might have understood.
Like crows they come to spy and sift the past,
To lift a dimming vision from obscurity.
Homing in on what they fear were better days
They hope to reach the substance of a world
In your remains.

© BH 1982

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I was reminded of this by hearing about a programme in the US tracing the history of King Arthur. It wound up here on the hill fort of Dunadd. My wife’s parents lived there and their dust is scattered at the foot of the rock. I have reason to feel the ancestors in this place.

At the time of writing it was only the ancients. of course

The illustration is based on a photo © Dorcas Sinclair - a file licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license through Wikipedia Commons.