The Mnajdra Temples, Malta.(Poem)

 
THE MNAJDRA TEMPLES, MALTA 
 
   As if they'd been thrown down by a god in a temper 
   rocks lie at random all over the hill. The ground 
   is riddled with stones. It ought to be barren 
 
   but it's given birth to flocks of yellow flowers 
   so jubilant they'd dull toucan beaks or the flesh 
   of mangos, so deeply yellow they're almost saffron. 
 
   And it's brought forth blooms with crimson throats 
   and scatterings of minute un-English pansy faces, 
   created an Eden without trees or hedges. I try 
 
   to picture hundreds of rocks being lugged and hewn 
   five thousand years ago, the tedious labour 
   of raising these buildings, the apertures and domes 
 
   offered to the sky. Even lopped, crumbling, 
   their grandeur remains: a deep doorway intact 
   in a wall whose massive slabs fit perfectly, 
 
   a worn monolith still striving upwards, the rounding 
   of apses, the solid spine of plant carvings 
   that supports an altar table, the small figures, 
 
   now in the museum, whose hugely rounded knees, 
   hips, bellies, elbows and shoulders so graphically 
   celebrate fecundity. The booklet is full of explanations 
 
   about oracular rooms, sacrificing sheep and oxen, 
   refreshments carried through the curtained chambers 
   in exquisitely shaped jars but it ...