(80th birthday exhibition, Bradford, Cartwright Hall, April 1978)
These stones
are strange, familiar giants;
Easter Island myths
on laundered grass.
Human megaliths of
polished evolution –
machined erosion to
a Godlike line.
They are explorers, signs
of mountainous rock;
cavernous mysteries for
blind, sensitive fingers
seeking beauty. How?
Miners’s arms, and
farmer’s heart, with
mason’s art combined.
Transmute our dust
into a noble monument;
but these stones
will not soften in
the spring rain.
The wind and frost
cannot crack them.
Children slap and slide
over them laughing.
But they only smile
unseen, and stand
eternal;
Bones of man’s past,
sentinels of the future