I passed a window full of televisions
         as gray as British bankers,
                  though imported.
        And there in England I saw
the twin towers of its former colony
        crumble like toys made of fire
                and brimstone,
        the enormity of it more
terrible, reduced to fit in a living room.

Were we the only Americans in Bath
        that November? So insisted
                the taxi driver
        winding his way to Stonehenge.
And there stood the stones just over a rise
        As if just yesterday, back
                in the Iron Age,
        some first farmer had tried
to clear a field so he could plant it.

And there they still sat as if over the hill
        would yet come a last wagon,
                two centuries late,
        and men to complain how hard
to break off a piece they could carry away.
        For what earthly use was this folly
                  to the eighteenth century?
         There were great houses to be built.
For the newly rich lived lives made sweeter

by ships full of trinkets bound for the Gold Coast
         and then, with human cargo,
                  for the New World.
         Bales of cotton staggered
onto Bristol dock—O sprigged muslin-to-be,
         O spring frocks! Jane Austen,
                  does your ghost
ever range this far from Bath on its walks?

If so, I apologize. I wore last year’s coat
         that chilly British morning.
                  It wasn’t enough.
         But the stones were dressed
in lichen even older. We walked the circle
         of path that kept the henge
                  safe from our touch.
         We walked it again. How many
had died to stand the stones there?

—Debora Greger