This poem, written by Kathleen Raine, was one of the readings shared by the companions at the Mountains of the Sun weekend. We were seated atop an ancient long barrow, that had been built over a yet earlier mound; life upon life upon life, all sharing the same green earth in a continuous story.

We cannot know what our ancestors believed, what hopes and fears shaped their building of these houses of the unborn, but we, as human beings, may perhaps understand at a deeper level that needs neither logic nor explanation, the love and care with which they raised earth and stone to house those who had passed beyond knowledge.

We may see, in the shape of these mounds, the rounded curves of the Mother and in their tunnels, the dark passageway of birth. We can perhaps feel that our ancestors, whose lives were so closely bound to the…