An epic is usually the defense of a narrow
place against odds. W.P. Ker
In what narrow place do we find ourselves
now, against what dreadful odds
defend it.
A hundred and forty-nine million square
kilometers, can this place, our hectic love
for it, really be so slight?
A same fear, there, in a New Grange
burial mound, eighty-five meters round,
farmers huddled within,
5,000 years ago, waiting solstice light,
asking only that a narrowest splinter crawl
that nineteen-meter passage,
find them in that burial chamber, tell them
life had lined up again over death.
What sign, seers, for us?
*New Grange: ancient burial site, about thirty-five miles from Dublin.
