Cissbury Ring

 


Cissbury Ring


Offshoot of the South Downs

The hill fort towers over Sussex and the sea

Crowned with gorse, a vantage point,

Cissbury Ring, where ponies roam.


Your dykes and ramparts cover mines

Twelve thousand years old

Where humans first dug your flint 

To be armed against each other.


More lately machine guns fired

At ships and aircraft in the last World War

Exploiting your heights, as humankind

Has done for twelve millennia.


Looking over Seven Sisters and Brighton, 

Worthing and the Isle of Wight

Cissbury Ring is a scenic platform 

And pretext for a poem.


John Twisleton 23 August 2023

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