Whoâs this moving alive over the moor?
Whoâs this moving alive over the moor?
An old man seeking and finding a difficulty.
Has he remembered his compass his spare socks
does he fully intend going in over his knees off the military track from Okehampton?
keeping his course through the swamp spaces
and pulling the distance around his shoulders the source of the Dart â Cranmere Pool on Dartmoor, seven miles from the nearest road
and if it rains, if it thunders suddenly
where will he shelter looking round
and all that lies to hand is his own bones?
tussocks, minute flies,
          wind, wings, roots
He consults his map. A huge rain-coloured wilderness.
This must be the stones, the sudden movement,
the sound of frogs singing in the new year.
Whoâs this issuing from the earth?
The Dart, lying low in darkness calls out Who is it?
trying to summon itself by speaking ⦠the walker replies
An old man, fifty years a mountaineer, until my heart gave out,
so now Iâve taken to the moors. Iâve done all the walks, the Two
Moors Way, the Tors, this long winding line the Dart
this secret buried in reeds at the beginning of sound I
wonât let go of man, under
his soakaway ears and his eye ledges working
into the drift of his thinking, wanting his heart
I keep you folded in my mack pocket and Iâve marked in red
where the peat passes are and the good sheep tracks
cow-bones, tin-stones, turf-cuts.
listen to the horrible keep-time of a man walking,
rustling and jingling his keys
at the centre of his own noise,
clomping the silence in pieces and I
I donât know, all I know is walking. Get dropped off the military track from Oakehampton and head down into Cranmere pool. Itâs dawn, itâs a huge sphagnum kind of wilderness, and an hour in the morning is worth three in the evening. You can hear plovers whistling, your feet sink right in, itâs like walking on the bottom of a lake.
What I love is one foot in front of another. South-south-west and down the contours. I go slipping between Black Ridge and White Horse Hill into a bowl of the moor where echoes canât get out
listen,
a
lark
spinning
around
one
note
splitting
and
mending
it
and I find you in the reeds, a trickle coming out of a bank, a foal of a river
one step-width water
of linked stones
trills in the stones
glides in the trills
eels in the glides
in each eel a fingerwidth of sea
in walking boots, with twenty pounds on my back: spare socks, compass, map, water purifier so I can drink from streams, seeing the cold floating spread out above the morning,
tent, torch, chocolate, not much else.
Whichâll make it longish, almost unbearable between my evening meal and sleeping, when Iâve got as far as stopping, sitting in the tent door with no book, no saucepan, not so much as a stick to support the loneliness
he sits clasping his knees, holding his face low down between them,
he watches black slugs,
he makes a little den of his smells and small thoughts
he thinks up a figure far away on the tors
waving, so if something does happen,
if night comes down and he has to leave the path
then weâve seen each other, somebody knows where we are.
falling back on appropriate words
turning the loneliness in all directions â¦
through Broadmarsh, Â Â Â Â Â Â under Cut Hill,
Sandyhole, Sittaford, Hartyland, Postbridge,
Belever, Newtake, Dartmeet, the whole
unfolding emptiness branching and reaching
and bending over itself.
I met a man sevenish by the river
where it widens under the main road
and adds a strand strong enough
to break branches and bend back necks.
Rain. Not much of a morning.
Routine work, getting the buckets out
and walking up the cows â I know you,
Jan Coo. A Wind on a deep pool. Jan Coo: his name means So-and-So of the Woods, he haunts the dark.
Cows know him, looking for the fork
Whoâs this moving alive over the moor?
An old man seeking and finding a difficulty.
Has he remembered his compass his spare socks
does he fully intend going in over his knees off the military track from Okehampton?
keeping his course through the swamp spaces
and pulling the distance around his shoulders the source of the Dart â Cranmere Pool on Dartmoor, seven miles from the nearest road
and if it rains, if it thunders suddenly
where will he shelter looking round
and all that lies to hand is his own bones?
tussocks, minute flies,
          wind, wings, roots
He consults his map. A huge rain-coloured wilderness.
This must be the stones, the sudden movement,
the sound of frogs singing in the new year.
Whoâs this issuing from the earth?
The Dart, lying low in darkness calls out Who is it?
trying to summon itself by speaking ⦠the walker replies
An old man, fifty years a mountaineer, until my heart gave out,
so now Iâve taken to the moors. Iâve done all the walks, the Two
Moors Way, the Tors, this long winding line the Dart
this secret buried in reeds at the beginning of sound I
wonât let go of man, under
his soakaway ears and his eye ledges working
into the drift of his thinking, wanting his heart
I keep you folded in my mack pocket and Iâve marked in red
where the peat passes are and the good sheep tracks
cow-bones, tin-stones, turf-cuts.
listen to the horrible keep-time of a man walking,
rustling and jingling his keys
at the centre of his own noise,
clomping the silence in pieces and I
I donât know, all I know is walking. Get dropped off the military track from Oakehampton and head down into Cranmere pool. Itâs dawn, itâs a huge sphagnum kind of wilderness, and an hour in the morning is worth three in the evening. You can hear plovers whistling, your feet sink right in, itâs like walking on the bottom of a lake.
What I love is one foot in front of another. South-south-west and down the contours. I go slipping between Black Ridge and White Horse Hill into a bowl of the moor where echoes canât get out
listen,
a
lark
spinning
around
one
note
splitting
and
mending
it
and I find you in the reeds, a trickle coming out of a bank, a foal of a river
one step-width water
of linked stones
trills in the stones
glides in the trills
eels in the glides
in each eel a fingerwidth of sea
in walking boots, with twenty pounds on my back: spare socks, compass, map, water purifier so I can drink from streams, seeing the cold floating spread out above the morning,
tent, torch, chocolate, not much else.
Whichâll make it longish, almost unbearable between my evening meal and sleeping, when Iâve got as far as stopping, sitting in the tent door with no book, no saucepan, not so much as a stick to support the loneliness
he sits clasping his knees, holding his face low down between them,
he watches black slugs,
he makes a little den of his smells and small thoughts
he thinks up a figure far away on the tors
waving, so if something does happen,
if night comes down and he has to leave the path
then weâve seen each other, somebody knows where we are.
falling back on appropriate words
turning the loneliness in all directions â¦
through Broadmarsh, Â Â Â Â Â Â under Cut Hill,
Sandyhole, Sittaford, Hartyland, Postbridge,
Belever, Newtake, Dartmeet, the whole
unfolding emptiness branching and reaching
and bending over itself.
I met a man sevenish by the river
where it widens under the main road
and adds a strand strong enough
to break branches and bend back necks.
Rain. Not much of a morning.
Routine work, getting the buckets out
and walking up the cows â I know you,
Jan Coo. A Wind on a deep pool. Jan Coo: his name means So-and-So of the Woods, he haunts the dark.
Cows know him, looking for the fork
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