Standing stones, from the Celtic colloquium

Standing stones have a great thirst. They were giants once. Once every hundred years they go down to the river to drink, and if you have mistletoe and clover, you can steal their treasure. Stones know things. PStanding stones, from the Celtic colloquiumeople used to cut crosses into the stones to baptize the stones in order to make them Christian. But in Carnac, the people were turned into stone. Girls were turned into stone at midnight. Did you know the stones of Stonehenge were brought from Ireland, or Africa, or a parallel universe. They have medicinal virtues. Fertility. Rub a bare breast against the stone. Bathing at the base of the stones will give you domestic power. But stones can cause disease—like the wasting sickness of Cuchulain. On the stones is where the Otherworldly birds gather. In the Táin, Fergus talks to the stones, and the animals talk to him. The curative stones are associated with the Saints. The harmful stones are associated with the dead. The Giants stones are neutral. Stones know things, ignore them at your peril.

From a lecture by Anton Minard, Brittany, Celtic Colloquium 25 at UC Berkeley 4/3/03

VENUS UNEARTHED

It was an unusually dry year in 1820 when the
farmer's plow hit a stone in the fallow field of Melos.
Thinking it was a building block to salvage,
Theodore Kentortaus wrested from the earth
the object of perfect love.

When he pulled the goddess Aphrodite (or Venus)
from the shallow grave, he fell in love,
spent an unmeasured amount of time in his shed
gazing upon her beauty, 'til his wife, jealous,
sold her to the French. Was it the maddening April winds
or the vestiges of an older story
that fanned her rage?

When Venus was hoisted onto the French frigate
she saw the sea was curved like a bell,
she escaped into the water. Her white arms
were lost when the sailors tried to raise her
from Posideon's watery depths.
Some say it was because she didn't want to leave Greece.
A fisherman fell in love with her,
gathered up her pitiful broken arms,
rowed far out into the Aegean and tossed them overboard
so she would always embrace the boats of the fishermen.

Men searched the sea in vain for her arms,
unable to find the watery X the fisherman marked.
Now, only fish gaze upon the beauty of her white arms:
one hand holding the hard-won golden apple of discord 
the other gathering up her robes as she received
the judgement of Paris. Hera's final revenge—
a skirmish broke out between the French and Germans.
A stray shot chipping a piece from the face of Venus,

mutilating the immortal beauty that Paris claimed.

4/1/1988
rev. 3/89