Canto IV – The Valley

“I am worthy to folk, and found widely,
brought from forests and fortress-hills,
from dales and from downs.”

-        Riddle 27

When walking through this royal forest

be wary of its king –

red-ruffed and crowned

with lance of livid bone –

he witnessed the first smelting

of iron and bronze and scratched

the first scuff atop Tarr’s stone –

no cairn, nor crypt, nor copper mine

escaped his liquid crystal eye –

no steward, warden, or forester

could soften his primal cry –

the phantom cat

would never tag a hind –

the hares themselves

would never tempt a chase –

or else risk their circles

stamped and crushed without a trace –

it is known and recorded in this valley’s annals

the sun itself wilted a paler yellow

when the sky first emptied

for their thundered bellow.

So count your step

over the moor’s crannies and crags

lest you slip

and meet Exmoor’s stags.

To the north of the moor,

lies one of Brutus’ fallen foes,

massive calcium fingers stretching forth,

great stalactite ribs, bleached

and exposed – pecked clean

by the rain, the goats, and Father Time;

caught and captured in divine repose.

Wordsworth and Coleridge walked the vale,

and knew its packed and balanced peaks

contained the kernel of the oldest tale;

they knocked their heads and penned their

riff and refrain, to illustrate for the masses,

the eternal wanderings of Cain.

The king of the moor chewed the sedge

and mocked the poets in their pledge –

the piece was never clean nor complete,

how, after all, could they trace Cain’s retreat?

Whilst still marred and marked,

he held death in its defeat,

and the fugitive watched the poets himself,

still wandering, still roving,

still fleeing over and over

this valley’s flinted seat.

Across the mist, the last Victorian marched

along the guggling brook –

the stumps and stones of Badgworthy

never knew the man who took

that ancient, storied valley –

once beholden to the river’s tune –

now known for that portended name

that moniker, that bloodline,

that ‘Doone’.

Between litigation and allotment,

Blackmore had little time for saga

or syllables, but could not rid his mind

of carvers and weddings and knew;

a romance was not beautiful

simply because it was true.

Though his other works languish

and wallow in the muse’s ether –

if ever he saw that novel

still splayed in countless hands,

anxiously thumbing – perhaps

he would have smiled, even when

he chilled and seized and knew,

the frost was coming for him, too.

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