2 poems by Peter Surkov

At Stoney Littleton Long Barrow, Somerset

Early Neolithic communities can seem obsessed with death. In contrast to the scant and flimsy remains of the houses of the living, the ‘houses of the dead’ stand as seemingly timeless memorials.*

Fine rain. Crows on sheep-cropped fields. Grey scree. October trees flaring on the opposite

ridge. Cross the stream by the car park, then the upwards path along a sparse hedge.

At top – a visitor sign, a fence to keep out grazers, and stout beams to prop the barrow’s

mouth. All else unchanged. The barrow swells from the low hill’s head.

Stand.

They chose this hill. Rough tools bit limestone under shallow soil. They dug and piled.

Later, antiquarians and archaeologists came: 1816, 1858, 1938, 2000. The large bones

gathered, catalogued and bagged in climate-controlled rooms. Fragments left to sleep – here,under heaped sod and dry-stone walls.

Crouch. Crawl.

*Joshua Pollard, Neolithic Britain

Substrate

An event of growth followed a process of decay or destruction, and human bodies were inserted into that process at the point where decay was transmuted into growth.*

grounding a body beside

shifts of a body

sound of a body breathing

alone you sleep badly

among dead roots

of a wind-split oak

they laid me

a garden

where flowers would grow

through the body’s strata

radicles probe

thirst’s answer

no light at the curtain

no alarm

*Chris Fowler, ‘Pattern and diversity in the Early Neolithic mortuary practices of Britain and Ireland’

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Peter Surkov's poems have appeared in journals including The Rialto, Magma, Blackbox Manifold, and Stand. He won the 2023 Canterbury Christ Church University Prize, and was highly commended in the 2025 Winchester Poetry Competition. He works as a doctor in London