Poetic Licence

STONEHENGE

The annual midsummer mayhem has taken place at Stonehenge, with druids, pagans and English Heritage all disappointed when New Age travellers hijacked their event in a clash with the police.

The earlier engravings show

Small groups of men in tricorn hats

Defoe remarked they'd turned up bones

Within the shadows of the stones

Conventional opinion held

That many of the bluestones came

From Wales, lugged somehow overland

Since local stone is not the same

This theory now on shaky ground

Like dogs, the experts rag it

round

While all the props remain onstage

The tide-marks of the glacier age

And silly men and women come

Each year in costume, different groups

A few to bark through megaphones

While others call in high-pitched whoops

Short of a pound by several pence

The celebrants become intense

'Til in the name of common sense

Some men arrive to build a fence

Still more will tear it down of course

As Newton's laws come into force

Strange how proprietorial

Their arguments all seem to be

One group to bawl: "We are not free."

The next to plead: "Our history."

A further group to referee

While others film it for TV

A sorry ritual every year

The Wiltshire police in riot gear

As deasil and widdershins*

Again the circle dance begins

The stones remain impassive there

And why should Sol, the sun-god care?

We cannot know the reason why

The ancients raised the sarsens high

But one has just occurred to me:

An idiot magnet possibly.

*clockwise and anti-clockwise