The Twelve Stones of Pentre Ifan
The wind
Over my shoulder
Blows from the cold of time.
It has
Shaped the hill,
It has honed the rock outcrops
With the
Granules of its
Rasping. When the old ones
Were born
They dropped in dark-
ness, like sheep, and hot animals
Howled for
The afterbirths.
I watch the great stones of
Faith they
Moved in the flickering
Mountains of their nameless
Lives, and
See once more the
Points of adjusted rock, taller
Than any
Man who will ever
Stand where I stand, lifting their hope
In still,
Huge stone, pointed
To the flying wind. The sea ebbs again
And round
The endless brevity
Of the seasons the old men’s cromlech
Prepares
Its hard shadows.
The four great stones, elate and springing,
And the
Smaller stones, big
As a man, leaning in, supporting.
Leslie Norris (Walking the White Fields: Poems 1967-1980)
Author: Scott Abbott
I received my Ph.D. in German Literature from Princeton University in 1979. Then I taught at Vanderbilt University, BYU, and Utah Valley State College. At Utah Valley University, I directed the Program in Integrated Studies for its initial 13 years and was also Chair of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy for three years. My publications include a book on Freemasonry and the German Novel, two co-authored books with Zarko Radakovic (REPETITIONS and VAMPIRES & A REASONABLE DICTIONARY, published in Serbo-Croatian in Belgrade and in English with Punctum Books), a book with Sam Rushforth (WILD RIDES AND WILDFLOWERS, Torrey House Press), a "fraternal meditation" called IMMORTAL FOR QUITE SOME TIME (University of Utah Press), and translations of three books by Austrian author Peter Handke, of an exhibition catalogue called "The German Army and Genocide," and, with Dan Fairbanks, of Gregor Mendel's important paper on hybridity in peas. More famously, my children are in the process of creating good lives for themselves: as a model and dance/yoga studio manager, as a teacher of Chinese language, as an ecologist and science writer, as a jazz musician, as a parole officer, as a contractor, as a seasonal worker (Alaska and Park City, Utah), and as parents. I share my life with UVU historian Lyn Bennett, with whom I have written a cultural history of barbed wire -- THE PERFECT FENCE (Texas A&M University Press). Some publications at http://works.bepress.com/scott_abbott/
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Adventures in the Humanities UVU 