Canto IX – Dartmoor

“Once thou hast heard on hillside’s slope

The melancholy cuckoo calling in the wood.

Thereafter, do not thou be stayed from journeying,

Hindered in thy going, by any living man.

Seek the deep…”

-        The Husband’s Message

If the sea is the primal mouth;

yawning desire and chewing mountains

into glass – then the moor

is the creature’s stomach: vast

and swelling and folding over

and over and over.

This hare’s belly is quietly alive –

it lingers and slopes with the weight

of gorsy bacteria; the stones have roots,

the moss has eyes, the dirt deals in

memories. Here is directed, 

in gastral omniscience, the nightmares 

and evil and sin. Here, shadows flock 

to die; burnt up every morning

in clots of crimson and blue. Empty,

yet teeming –

the transmuting of death into life

is one more instance of digestion

in a divine system intent on boiling

demons into dragons – freedom offered

for the price of wings. 

You taste it

in the tendons of the tensing soil

and the contractions of a broken birch.

If you are alone and stewing

in that balmy, draggled light – 

beware –

you are already swallowed

and to resist

is never worth the fight.

Hark the clamour of hounds and horns

jettisoned by spit-flecked spectral

lips – billowing bloody murder

on Devon’s moors; all creatures

no matter their ilk or size tremble

when the hooves of the Wild Hunt rip

and wreck the bracken – the only creatures

whoever dared to snarl and snap

the heels of the hares in their orbit.

Old Crockhern himself, knock-kneed

with the weight of Wistwood witchcraft

could not placate Cabell’s hounds –

those bawling shrieking blemishes,

who’d fang the Devil’s honeyed fingers

and gore the Sun for the taste

of a single cosmic tear.

That was what brought the physician –

those rattling gut wails forcing boulders

to shake beneath their moss –

yet still, Doyle came,

dressed and pomped

and stinking like London;

he slumped into Fox Tor Mire

and pressed a stethoscope to the peat

and listened to its rotting heartbeat.

He knew that no incantation would quell

what the Devil himself could not restrain

and sought instead a different spell

and found salvation in the human brain –

Holmes! The sound alone breaks fantasy

and makes circles of poor paradox;

those baying shades with burning jowls

could not out-talk that lucid fox

and fled debate and reason both and

stopped and stalled in sin and growth;

no longer do they bite or prowl

yet, if you tarry and cock an ear

you might just catch their final howl.

Perhaps you’ll hear the hum-hiss

of armoured bees, drudging honey

and droning poison in Plath’s ear –

bumping fuzzy lances against

the bell jar with all the rhythm

of a Roman mob; the moor was not fond

of Americans, but made exceptions

for a pithy tongue whip-cracking fascists

and digging small heels in the sides of lions –

that magician’s ally,

that woman from the foam –

resurrected at dawn

to char the distant tors

and bring them into clarity.

Lent lilies prostrated

and clamped green hands to gilt mouths

afraid those spun-sugar fingers

would twist their trumpets

and croon chaos in the cavity;

this moor could not decipher why

it sensed her glass-wrapped steps

like ruddy thunder on a wire

and why – once those footfalls

ceased, the sound was louder still –

never before or since could that giggling,

riotous mass of land remember

a louder silence.

Egg,

then gunk

then foot – branched

and burst from calcium –

that trident noose clawing

for oxygen, that pink afterbirth

beating naked wings;

there and forever

was Crow. Cawing forth

the pinion stubble – that black

rainbow, those quills of kings

dragging, dipping, devouring;

it roamed and sought the

earth quivers, where coiling worm

counted loam and bang! Stilettoed,

dissected, ripped into Exodus –

Crow cut patches of that coral flesh

and gobbled and feasted and

paused – knowing once more

it was under the eye of another –

the man was following Crow again.

Beatle-browed and pinching verse,

crouched and quiet and watching –

always watching –

thumbs orbiting the blackened nib

to paint nature’s calamities;

Crow resolved to return the favour

and skated clouds and half-heartedly

sniped the squealing wisps, never removing

its onyx glims from the man’s long coat –

he often strayed and bent to stroke

the floral cilia, but would start and flip his shoulder

and steel his eyes

and hawk Crow with hanging glares

and force the bird to descend and strut

like a puppet on a string –

jerking the motions

in primitive mummery –

and he would laugh and laugh

and laugh again and walk away

and that troubled avian would

skew its face and puzzle

why he was never shocked

by the interests of a puny god.

The man left and returned,

grizzled and palled and scooping

dirt with crocodile hands

and Crow approached once more

and saw him digging in cow bellies

and hooded, fleeing the rain cuffs,

chasing bleats and fearing horses.

One day, when Crow could feel

the gum in its eye and the slack

in its plumes, it circled and dropped

and that raking foot once more mauled

the air and Crow knew it was dying

and when a vast shadow split the sun,

the bird raised its gaze to spit in the Devil’s eye

but instead once more met the man

stooped and studying;

am I dead? Asked Crow

no – said the man – and Crow believed him

and died and Hughes gathered that soot bundle

and buried it in a cairn by the river Teign

and never laughed

at another bird again.

It is difficult to find circles

In a jagged land – but carve the rowan

and drink the rings and know

the hares are happiest darting

over marram grass on tufted wings –

those crystal strands, pale and pure,

a white-gold crown

upon the moor.

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