An Ancient Blade

An Ancient Blade

 

There’s that sure sense of a job well done

That can span millennia and survive

Several hundred sowings and reapings:

 

To have worked perfection into this paring

Of stone. Precision knapping: chamfering

Both sides with deft little strikes, admiring

 

The translucence of the edge, the leaflike

Curve of the outer blade. It can only

Have hatched a smile of satisfaction.

 

It is a fine gleaning, a claim to fame,

A little soliloquy in flint, a tiny

Bronze-Age shout of triumph.

 

Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. Inspired by a microlith found in a field near Uffington, 1st September 2012.

Done