Three Hare Song

by Nathan Steward

Introduction

In the Summer of 2025, I sent out an application for a Devon creative bursary, with a detailed plan for a ‘long-form unique poem of my own design’. It was ambitious and thorough and seemed to possess all the possible answers to any barrier I might encounter – this was, of course, not the case. Kernels of my finished piece can be traced to those early ideas, but even more than what was newly included, is the extent to which I restrained my loftier aspirations. The poem which emerged is tighter, more focused, and yet somehow far longer than initially imagined!

It has been a wonderful experience of walking beaches, cliffs, bogs and moorland – pacing the cobbles where an author’s feet once walked – or even, in the case of Dickens, drinking and leering at patrons in the same pubs they once frequented. The most inspiring aspect of this exploration – and that which links and binds every canto of my piece – is the Exeter Cathedral's Exeter Book. This is the largest (and perhaps oldest) collection of old Anglo-Saxon poetry that we possess; it takes no great leap to brand the text as foundational for all English literature. Throughout my poem, each section begins with an excerpt from the various translated elegies and riddles contained within. These epigraphs reflect the themes of the places and authors explored in each canto and serve to reveal how this seminal, ancient text speaks to all of Devon as well as every author who has ever called it home.

Alongside the Exeter Book is my titular motif for the piece: the Three Hares. A widespread and mysterious symbol, the icon of three interlinked running hares has been discovered in places of prominence for Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It is a metaphor and a riddle and a conundrum – we can track its history and migration, but we still don’t know what it means. Presented both negatively and positively, the Three Hares are often seen as emblematic of rebirth, fertility, lunar cycles, the trinity, or perhaps a mathematical puzzle. What was particularly fascinating to me, is the symbol’s significant concentration in Devon and Dartmoor as opposed to the rest of the country. Rather than cast my own definitions and theories for the hares, however, I decided to embrace this mystery. They are both chained and free – linear and cyclical – rebirth and death, and everything in between. For every story and poem written and performed in Devon, I imagined three hares watching and waiting, always together, always running.

I cannot avoid the fact this is a long poem. So, settle in somewhere wrapped and warm and quiet, perhaps put your phone in a harmless and productive place – like a locked safe or a bin – and relax. I cannot promise great sights or scenes or wonderful smells or tastes in my piece – it is only words – but there is a song hidden in there somewhere, if you listen out for it

- Nathan

Contents

Prelude

Canto I – The City

Canto II – A Little Village

Canto III – Oteri Sancte Marie

Canto IV – The Valley

Canto V – Torrent Mouth

Canto VI – Torre

Canto VII – Westward

The Circles

Canto VIII – Toppa’s Village

Canto IX – Dartmoor

Canto X – Barum on the Taw

Canto XI – Sedemuda

Canto XII – Salterne

Canto XIII – The River

The Coda

Prelude

This earth – this portion – it is

like a green kiss upon

the cheek of God; soft

rolling memories of breath

and limestone. Mark, carefully, the land

of peat and tin and moss and know

there are knockers fingering copper

in its darkest corners and piskies

curdling milk and pinching children and

across the moors heed the screams

of frothed mares bolting

from the last wild hunt.

There is a brilliance here

when the sun soaks

and slips like butter –

a prophet’s alchemy of fire

from the sky drooling

over bluffs and scarps –

to think, such simple chemistry

eluded us and the ancients both.

After all, we could never birth a gold

as brazen as the skies of Dumnonia –

yet despite the acid-grass and thunder

this land is tender – a hare’s heart

holds no chambers but is wide

and heathered and packed with

pity for these mortal frames

sprinting and gasping

from dust to dust. They smell

the impotence in men’s fingertips

and choose instead to grant us memory,

gilded thoughts from Devon’s golden

cerebrum – ideas, impressions –

inspiration from the blood

and the cud – listen closely

the gorse is singing.

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Canto I Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Exeter; The Exeter Book, Charles Dickens, Sabine Baring Gould, Allen Lane, J. K. Rowling

Canto I – The City

 “It will be well for those who seek the favour,
the comfort from our father in heaven,
where a battlement bulwarks us all.”

-        The Wanderer

Across the knolls and tors they

heeded this primal melody

and came with their young and

daubed ochre glyphs on crumbling

trunks and carved the throats of lambs

and ran the blood into the rivers and

built their forts and dams. The soil

curdled beneath their feet and eddied

stories in their nostrils and from these

first and oldest rites they gummed their piecemeal

god. The hares hastened their circles and watched

with glassy cosmic eyes as the flax and oak 

gave way to turrets of limestone and mortar

and men abandoned their lyres for the truths

of bruised parchment.

There is a man – the land sees him

coddled in wax and shadows – with a

shaven pate and a dead graven god

swinging on a chain from his throat

who first recorded the riddles and songs

of exile, love and war. He breathed

in silence; perched on the bank

of a lake of words, watching the vowels

and consonants lap at the corners

of his thumb. The hares in all their clamour

could not fathom the clasped lips of

a tooth-and-tongue creature and leered,

perturbed, as the man dug furrows and buried

his hours in Matins, Lauds and Vespers –

this strangeness only had a voice

in the sibilations of a sharpened quill

and the trees ogled the hands

plucking thin black wasps

to mash in Arabic gum and pour

that sepia sea into his inkwell – 

a quiver full of kennings

worthy of Kinnewolf –

stealing those wanderers

from the jaws of eons, singing lays with

a seafarer’s lung. The local groves granted

chiselled boards to harbour those parchment planes

and the cobalt flax surrendered linen

to stab and seal its chains.

Hour after hour, season after season,

the man toiled and trimmed

and measured and thought and smiled

and died. The book passed hand by hand

until it nestled in the palm of the cleric

of the Confessor – there it remained –

cloaked and crowded on the Bishop’s shelf,

watching the bastard conqueror crack steel

knuckles upon the cathedral door. The angels

and cross-legged Kings split stony eyes

and wept hot mortar to see the book

of the silent man so loudly ignored;

cheap wine began to frill the pages,

a knife was filed against its hide

and the devil’s kiss of a sizzling poker

scorched the hours and days of the monk

into black ragwork scraps. Finally,

in search of a God without a mitre,

they dug in the dust and pig-skin

and proclaimed in fear at the sight

of poetry. Now, Pound and Tolkien can

roll their tongues over riddles and conjugations

and raise red blooms from black soil

and birth a new earth between the syllables

and a glass-eyed child – clutching a brolly

and chewing his bunk – can stir his mouth

to Fairfax’s tree and talk the centuries

with a long-dead monk.

This portion was patient awaiting

the poor man’s laureate,

and the ravens chattered and purred

while Latimer’s ally gazed upon

the mad-rat hustings and noted

the manic exertions and chants

of a baying parliament of paupers.

Dickens had come

to jaunt the cobbles of Dumnonia,

and nestled himself, snug and heady,

within the skull of a Turk, sipping lush

and watching a muse slip into slumber,

his long cigarette slipping and probing

into a blistering antennae.

The writer lodged every glimpse

and murmur and passion and stench

and chronicled those motions

into the lines and ledger of his vision –

locked and bound and serialised

behind a pulp-and-paste door –

the ravens fussed and jeered at the man

who always left and always returned

and always asked of this faithful city

if he please may have some more.

Antiquarian, author, songwriter,

poet, priest, friend and fool;

Gould garnered so many names

that the earth forgot his first

and the hares stamped canyons

and spluttered lakes in their efforts

to affix a title to his shifting soul –

marching over the moor flinging names

like some mad Adam – penning hymns

and jotting myths and dragging vrkolaks

and vlkoslaks from Satan’s locker.

Stoker squashed his eyes

to every bracket and every letter

of Devon’s mythmaker

in a fevered study of the madman

who first knew

the sting of the fang of Nosferatu.

Grass and gorse and jackdaw and flint

trembled and bit the earth, tightening

their grip on a rattling reality and snapping

their necks to watch bundles of steam

bulge from iron lips as carriages racketed

and raced across the melting ladders –

slowing, sauntering, simmering

to a halt by a man – fresh from tea

with the Queen of mystery.

The scutted temperament cannot conceive

the cleft within a mind devoid of tales –

the bolting tide of apathy

from an intellect craving

a single slice

of spined and jotted glory.

They marked the man, collared

and clad in clarity and missed

the moment – that precise pigment

of the psyche when the devil cries

and a brilliant notion yawps into life

like the cosmic engine of a well-oiled

comet; riddling sloth with bullets

and reminding Lane why he got

into the business of paper and ink

to begin with.

The rain giggled in sheets and rivers

and zipped and shuffled down the glass

in queues, scrumming its brothers

and sisters with all the gusto

of a far stronger current – the woman peered

and shivered within that warm harbour

of canned corporate jazz –

slumped in a café, keying accents,

slashing graves and poking trémas –

the waters mingled, ran and curled,

yucking and braying at a sight so tragic:

a student counting verbs

when she should be scrawling magic.

Those rings and cycles tugged

and tore and hindlegs ran and

ran some more – eternally

in flux and flex:

abiding, abiding, abiding,

in that faithful fortress

on the river Exe.

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Canto II Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Dean Prior; Robert Herrick

Canto II – A Little Village

“This wall stood long

Goat-grey, red-stained, kingdoms rose and fell,

Surviving storms; high curved arch crumbled.

Now moulders…”

-        The Ruin

This earth seldom entertains

the will of its smaller citizens – but

nor does it kill that which insists to fight;

it will bite the bricks and gnaw the mortar

and salivate the timber into slime and shreds

but it will not protest the fresh stone,

hot mortar, new dead shining oak –

do not mistake father time for his scythe

when he carries only illness and it is man

and man alone who murders. Yet this

smattering of stone quarters has seen much

of man and his doings – not, perhaps,

the wars and weddings and whisking

wheels which wrack and ruin the rest

of civilization; but it has tasted love and hate

and stood quietly by, resting in the lids

of dunnocks, to watch mothers tease their

children and fathers strike their sons and

daughters plant seed after desperate seed

into a cracked and dusky soil. So often

did these circles run, so fond were these

dust puppets of their rites and ritual,

that the hares hardly noticed the arrival

of Jonson’s protégé, with his book and his quill

and his sugared dreams of God.

The land was sobered and shaken

by concertos of lyric and ligament

and found its flowers weeping

and its roots chuckling

at the flagrancy of his verse –

a man with eyes to see

the liquid silks and unplucked roses

of youthful glee. When the wigged masses

traded tradition for mouths and blades, this son

of the ancients rebelled and the bluebells wilted

to witness Herrick leave in scorn his chapelled home,

decrying his people’s primitivity. The earth shipped

many a lark to stalk the poet’s progress

and hoisted stanzas back to the grass

on the backs of feathers and fleas – until

the poet, succoured by life, traipsed home to die.

Though the slab atop his chthonic bed

lies lichened and bare, the earth remembers

the songs of Herrick and would forgive

his discontent for the chance to hear

one more melody. Today, the only sound

on that hallowed ground is the passing whine

of black-clogged cars. Distraught

and abandoned, the land cries:

gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

before you are tarred and graved

into the common man’s motorway.

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Canto III Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Ottery St Mary; Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

Canto III – Oteri Sancte Marie

“A man skilled in song, received the land-rights

That the refuge of warriors erst rendered me.

That passed away; so may this.”

-        Deor

The glory of the western sky

and the warm red earth below;

holts and hives and labyrinths

cast in a vaulted glow –

perhaps that is what drew them

in their hordes and gaggles; those mini men

banished from old circles and barrows,

with lumpy rags and spiky eyes,

pecking stardust, burning barrels,

frolicking and chirping and romping,

pinching colt ears and twiddling manes,

tricking wayward infants into little thanes,

searching for another laugh to replace

their roughshod churlish giggle –

how could they suspect?

That their piskie holes and caves

would buckle under sabatons

when men arrived;

those Cromwells and Fairfaxs

chewing grease and grit and toasting

thick goblets thicker still

with the blood of Gaels and Irish spit.

Fear the peals

that ring circles for a smaller world;

the piskie droves knew their end was near

if Adonai reared belltowers to see and hear,

but dreaded more the youthful bard,

born squealing verse as fat as lard;

those clumsy rhythms pared and grew

into odes and sonnets and rime,

and that was when the piskies knew

man’s tooth and tongue

would rule the rest of time.

Still, they watched him

and sent Arabian spectres

to shake his cot and later tipped

his opium elbow, brewing poppied fancies

and then chuckling sorrow

when all their efforts to mire

and muddle that lyric man

only birthed his Kubla Khan –

they hightailed to their half-pint parlour

and the poet hastened his preaching

for conversation’s verse –

shilling Kant and Shelling

for a penny pauper’s purse.

If you peer down Oteri’s cobbles

where the piskie song now limps and hobbles –

that ancient noise is bent in thrall

to salute that verse

which blessed us all;

every creature and every craftsman

both very great

and very, very small.

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Canto IV Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Exmoor; William Wordsworth / Coleridge, R. D. Blackmoore

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 rambling 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 into speckled,

sickly space – it is known

and recorded in this valley’s annals

that the star above wilted a frailer yellow

when the sky first emptied

for their thunderclap bellow.

So count your step

over the moor’s crannies and crags

lest you trip

and meet Exmoor’s stags.

To the north of the moor,

lies one of Brutus’ fallen foes,

vast calcium fingers stretching forth,

great stalactite ribs, bleached

and exposed – pecked clean

by the rain, the goats and Father Time;

caught and captured in steel repose.

Wordsworth and Coleridge hiked the vale,

and knew its packed and balanced peaks

contained a kernel of the oldest tale;

they knocked their heads and inked

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 cut or complete –

how could they trace Cain’s retreat?

Whilst still marred and marked,

he held death in defeat

and the fugitive watched them himself,

still wandering, still roving,

still fleeing over and over

that valley’s flinted seat.

Across the mist, the last Victorian came

and 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 bloody moniker;

that ‘Doone’.

Between litigation and allotment,

Blackmore had little time for saga

or syllables, but could not empty 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 printed ether –

if ever he saw that novel still clasped

and splayed in countless thumbs – perhaps

he would concede a greater motive

and plainer notions

behind mankind’s lesser sights

and giddier motions.

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Canto V Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Lynmouth; Percy Bysshe Shelley

Canto V – Torrent Mouth

“The tides beat the shore, flung there at times

onto the stones and the sands of its cliffs

the weeds and waves, then I am struggling,

covered by tidal forces, rousing the earth,”

-        Riddle 2

It is a pretty thing, indeed,

to be loved by painters of any creed;

the mouth of the torrent curtains down

the valleyed oesophagus – myrtle-clad,

rose-clad, folding and folding;

a frothing, spitting steed –

this two-head flux

is sea bound and singing,

carrying pithy courtship

and crushing calamity

within its smaller twin –

that dozy beast,

that little Lyn.

He came with his entourage

to flee the pillow of state;

thirty cottages and a fort

of Myrtleberry – a home removed

from tyranny’s fate.

Nestled and kneaded

in sweet river whispers

and wind whistles, Shelley

ogled whitebeams and came to know

the flood of ages combatting below –

he taught his words to battle and balk

and sent them on the Devil’s walk,

and when news returned that the

brass had seized his faithful Hill,

this man – this foppish rebel –

could not be still and wrote

and cursed and fled to Tremadoc

and left to the torrent his cosmic bill.

The river watched and held its tongue

but later slashed its liquid lung –

a century, hence, it remembered to pay

and chose this cosy idyll for its prey –

great rabid suds and seeking waves

pried the banks and sought the graves.

So now, abstain from reciting his lines:

for all must ask in fragile breath,

how wonderful –

truly –

is death?

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Canto VI Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Torquay; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Agatha Christie

Canto VI - Torre

“I have wrought these words together out of a wryed existence,

The heart’s tally, telling off

The griefs I have undergone from girlhood upwards,

Old and new”

-         The Wife’s Complaint

When they cut and hollowed the tor

to brick-and-mortar God’s house,

this land did not expect its excavated limbs

to be offered to every convalescent

whoever coughed up a kingdom. This

was where they shipped Browning – broken

and disowned – hacking up heaven on the page

in blushing stanzas. The hares were satisfied

with her verse – the dying know how to live –

the bolted body bestows a key to the heart

which loves in ways immeasurable by depth

or breadth or height. They sent her for the sea,

and it received her coldly, pruning its foam to spit

through the shutters and graze her black-flame

brain with salted digits. In turn, she taunted

the ocean’s melody in its sevenfold cadence

and the waters ground their mossy molars

and drew their steel and knocked a wrothful palm

against her brother’s keel. He was adrift in the deep,

trusting fate to timber, rudder and bow

when the sea mocked the love of a poet

and dragged the man in pearly chains

to bite his eyes and barnacle his brow.

Browning chose to hate the land

of waxing stone and dread the ocean’s breath –

yet the sea was victorious only in hewing

a more profound poet; eating her edges

and polishing her marrow – like a sculptor

pulling patterns from the rubble – now

she steels a brittle spine and places pen

and ink upon the page and brings forth

new oceans and the waters of the tor

issue no reply.

The sea chanced and waited until the Millers fled

the new world to till the sand, where

amidst the lint and melted rock

they fed a child with story –

there was a leisure to this life, a civility:

a silk middle-class weight which hung and swung

like a hoop on a chain, and the fingers

which clutched the petticoat and boater

made shadows on the wall and imagined a world of death

behind the smiles and perfume and dignity – a stench

which dilates unseen – yet still she recited her ABC’s

at the Princess Gardens and traded two-pence

for the chance to skate the pier and pirouette

atop the dying planks, where below the lichen

coned and spiralled mouths crushed salt-crystal tack

and knocked their tongues against the pillars – 

but what is the sea to a child? Just noise

and froth tickling on the sweetest day of Summer;

Christie was thirteen when she nearly drowned

in the Beacon’s maw. Yet the sea was thwarted

by an old Sea Horse smoking a pipe,

scratching his beard, committing miracles

and dooming forests to the page.

She was only ever outsold by God

and Shakespeare; fine company

for a child who dreamed of music,

yet the calligraphy of ligaments evaded her careful hand

and the universe urged a love for a quieter composition.

So she watched her fellow watchmaker

and became one herself, teasing cogs and chimes,

learning the orbit of the soul of man –

that infernal, needling

tick. Christie knew

the devil was balding –

that Satan wore perfume and dined at three –

and she took that knowledge

of daggered smiles and poisoned handshakes

and turned it into mystery. Whilst cloistered

in sanitized rooms, dispensing powders,

serums, antidotes – the sea wondered

when her mind slipped

from the gentle snakes of Asclepius

to ponder the boomslang’s venom –

when the hand which gave

contemplated the weight and purpose

of the hand that took. After all,

amidst this linted landscape,

her mother carved a pastel paradise

and Christie chose to write bodies writhing

in the earth next to her childhood. Why

be afraid of anything but ignorance,

why worry about husbands clutching

their knives? When you can play with death

while you knit – each purl and cable

a disaster in imagined lives.

Christie understood

beneath her wiles and her wit

there was a golden maxim amidst the cruelty;

take what you want

and pay for it.

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Canto VII Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Westward Ho!; Charles Kingsley, Rudyard Kipling

Canto VII – Westward

“His thought is not for harp nor taking of rings –

Nor happiness in wife nor joy in worldly things –

Nor for aught else, save the surging waves;

But ever does he yearn who seeks the sea.”

-        The Seafarer

The salmon ran like crusted tapers –

a fleshy armada – massing

on the borders of the oak ensemble

to launch and flame the Torridge

in their efforts to glimpse a brick

of the pale town on the water juncture –

where they furnished seven ships to singe

Spanish beards and endowed paunchy Brittania

with commerce and colonies and three

snapped necks at Heavitree. A hare’s eye,

cannot distinguish between once, now,

or soon to be, yet dwelled long and often

upon the writ and preaching of Charles Kingsley –

who still rears upon the quay, marbled and grey,

whilst nearby, Rose Salterne drinks

and drowns another desperate day.

To the north, breathes an underground forest;

eight-dozen severed trunks, salt-smoked

into black stubs, now swept and shaven into

a shore – here is where Kinglsey first dug

his heels and devised fleets and fame –

a port for the common mariner to seek

adventure, murder, or a name.

He loved this slip of shingle,

shell and sand and tripped

and clattered up its pebbled ridge

with quarrymen in tow, to topple every boulder,

and examine the fauna pocketed below –

no skater nor sea-pie escaped his gaze

and yet, an empty idyll never pays;

Kingsley discarded a friend and lost a muse

when they stacked a village in his image;

we must ask would he still write, if he could know,

that his words would carve a new Westward Ho?

There would be nowhere for Kipling to go

and the world would be starved

of the capers of Stalky and co.

Fleeing the torments of Lorne Lodge,

he came to drill and conjugate

and mime those Imperial motions

against the ocean’s edge – yet more

pressing still than those stale notions

is the burden of a pen’s passion –

when upon the sound, he spied a blossom

he could not forget and from that light

spun and wove his tender net –  

a latticed love, a smitten mesh –

two glances, one blush

and a literary debt.

There is much to be won or witnessed

when stationed by the sea;

it is here the hares oft forget

their orbit’s leash and feign

to sprint with glee;

once more wild –

once more free –

for a sweet moment, or

a sweeter century.

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The Circles

“The air bears little creatures
over the hillsides. They are very black,
swarthy, dark-coated. Bountiful of song
they journey in groups, cry loudly,
tread the woody headlands, sometimes the town-dwellings
of the sons of men. They name themselves.”

-        Riddle 57

Should the poet ponder the head of Jormungand

or it’s flaying, punctured tail?

Where indeed to find a beginning or an end,

for that which cannot start nor fail?

The philosopher – the mathematician –

all must agree, that when trying and failing

to measure a ring, a sound, a thought, a circle –

they must abandon this first and oldest riddle

and draw a border

right down the orbit’s middle –

to pass hand by hand

on Mongol coin and Persian textile –

the hares which ran the circuit of the Earth

and came to rest on boss, headstone and tile.

But why – they cry,

is there always three?

Three nails in the palm of Christ

or three distinctions to the trinity?

Perhaps three jewels to rend Samsara

or the three Pure Ones of the Dao?

When pacing the three paths

which lead to Hecate,

they implore,

is this fertility or infinity?

Is it three branches for every tree

or three notes to shape a song,

perhaps three bits to every key,

or three sides to every story?

You ask and entreat and beg

for a tedious, tenuous clarity,

but is it truly a wonder, my friend,

that those three hares –

that shape-shifting mystery –

might sprint a candid chorus

hale and hoary

of sweet Dumnonia

and its eternal glory?

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Canto VIII Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Topsham; Thomas Hardy

Canto VIII – Toppa’s Village

Oft I had alone at every dawn

My sorrows to lament – none living now is there

To whom my heart I dare

Openly declare.

-        The Wanderer

Goat skin, carved, cured and stretched

into a heartbeat – that was the first

fell hammer against the buzzard’s ear

when it guzzled spleen and watched

the arrival of man. It tattooed again

into the setting sun and once more

into the morning until the buzzard

could no longer distinguish between

the footsteps or thuds of brick and grave

and the bird was shot and skewered

and its tiny porcelain skull rolled over

the straw floor in the palm of a child;

that was when they knew

this was Toppa’s village. Strange sounds,

strange birds and colours and soon the stink

of blood and wine and the buzzards saw

great wooden plumage cutting

the ocean’s jaw and men cowering

in their timber avian bellies.

Soot and smoke calcified

into whitewashed catacombs

spilling in avenues and dribbling down

the paved quay and the buzzards nicked

their nicotine-beaks and wondered why

the woman had come to Topsham. Swept up

by a Gale, Tryphena abandoned adolescence,

torched the leazes, and picked Toppa’s pasture

to bury Hardy’s ring and grow that gold

to flower. Buzzards and fishermen

and deserving mouths ate sweetbread

from her fist and lapped the kindness which

spills from heart-cracks and the birds held

assembly with their corvid cousins and

made covenant to never strike the neck

of a worm which reared from Tryphena’s

grave. Hardy blew in with the snow; dark

and occupied – the buzzard resumed

its lapine dissections and did not heed

the hurried note sacrificed on the cross

in memory of a muse or a lover,

but when those ink-stained atriums and ventricles

clutched and thundered from his chest,

this hunched killer balled its wings

and pelted for the mantle – terrified

that in that empty churchyard

it had once more heard

the sound of drums.

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Canto IX Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Dartmoor; Arthur Conan Doyle, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes

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 just 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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Canto X Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection:  Barnstaple; Henry Williamson 

Canto X – Barum on the Taw

 “Though sad at heart

Across the watery way a weary while must he

Stir with his hands the rime-cold sea,

Tread exile tracks: full pitiless is fate!”

-        The Wanderer

They were there to witness the timber lumps

heaped and squabbled into a burh

and later saw the flash of shears

and traded riches bleed and blur;

from this peopled paean, came a town

of rosy brick – the inner tower rising

higher and higher –

an ever-leering, two tongued

four-faced-liar.

Unnoticed and forgotten, hiding

amidst the bony bric-a-brac

in their holts and hollows –

they did not expect the man to follow

their brown, bouncing thread –

shellshocked, gassed, fractalized,

Williamson ceased to understand man

and his works and turned to them;

those needle-tooth citizens – slick

and bloody-whiskered wanderers,

whacking their clubs with all the moxie

of Jupiter’s thunder – they were honest,

more so, perhaps, than the world

he had left behind – they did not trick

or faun or placate their prey but sought

and pursued and pincered and refused

to waver a single obsidian eye

from the Salmon’s lidded peeping

but ripped and tore and tailored

crop circles from the carcass.

He trailed after their sodden paws

and parted reeds and crouched below

their clapper bridges, sharing

an apprehension of hunting hounds

and baying horns, watching from afar

this people’s strange ruck and reason –

knowing that he himself could not condemn

when more than any ideal or whim

he would rather flee his chequered reality

bury his flags

and become one of them.

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Canto XI Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Sidmouth; Jane Austen, H. G. Wells, J. R. R. Tolkien

Canto XI – Sedemuda

“Little did I know
that ever before or after,
I – mouth-less – across the mead-bench would have to speak.”

-        Riddle 60

Stabbed and whipped and trailed

to Golgotha – the little bird

watched with cryptochrome beads –

and came and nestled inside Man’s cavity

and leant its beak inside His heart

and flew away, scorched and smeared,

with a newly garneted breast. Now

the ruddock stalks the gardener’s boot

and hunter’s noose, to snipe

and gobble whatever rears

from the soil’s afterbirth; worms

and beetles and lizards and, if a chill

caulks shut those loamy lips,

then it will stiletto flesh gobbets

like its ruder brethren and angle

by a crystal pool, cutting up

its own kitsch reflection –

anti-narcissus, self-mocking felon –

the robin came to nest on Devon’s gum,

and watched this toothless mouth

gape and murmur and hum;

beat after beat, tale after tale –

those jaws motioned and the hares

trampled heaven and earth

to try and keep up

to no avail.

They did not bolt fast enough

to catch sight of Austen’s beau

and had to consult the robin

for garbled scraps of heartbreak –

served in rain-spattered evenings

and the fresh clutch of tears

at the clergyman’s wake.

Snooping the tearoom for crumbs,

the ruddock witnessed the fast fingers

of gentle Jane stretch and dart and clasp

another – and later pecked snags and snippets

of the wit and irony reserved for a lover –

it is known that that indomitable hand

penning prose and parody, stilled

for many months upon receipt of a letter –

yet the hares never knew

if it was a gospel legend

to entertain in good humour

or merely another

tattled rumour.

The man who invented tomorrow

often climbed Jacob’s ladder

to better watch the honeycomb puddles,

where – beneath the beadlets, snakelocks,

shannies, blennies and crabs – he would scry

the probing glint of an otherworldly eye.

Wells alone, thrust a palm into the sea-shafts

to wrap his wrist with suckered wires

and drag his homely krakens

into the common man’s mind

and memory, to better bind

and seal that ancient nightmare

with a cheerless ink

of blood and emery.

The robin enjoyed the rutted verse

which clicked and cascaded from Tolkien’s lips –

this tweed-and-tie magus,

mouthing consonants and inventing heritage;

He cosied himself in Kennaway

and forged his fable out of patchwork sagas

and regaled the bird which nestled on his ledge

with a syllable bouquet –

often he would eye nearby patrons

through the smoke and haze

for a thought or a phrase

to polish his kenning clay.

He looted Plato for his ring

yet hawked the sights of Sidmouth

for the pattern for his king.

The hares clucked and purred

and begged the robin for more –

the story of a riding horseman

or a Stymouth to explore –

but the ruddock fled at break of day

chirring and chuckling –

at the gall of its play.

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Canto XII Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Budleigh Salterton; Hilary Mantel

Canto XII – Salterne

“Ancient work devised with skill

….. bent under crusts of mud.

A mind grew keen, swift purpose drew,

resolute in rings…”

-        The Ruin

There is blood in the sea.

It muddles and oscillates

in an oblong haze, pulling the russet silt

which seeps from a soul riddled by revolution;

an infant Mantel, milk-haired and indignant,

poised upon the bluffs and glimpsed a ghost

of greater safety – seeding future visions

of a pebbled paradise. She left and learnt

to seek delineations in the tempest

of a scribbled sea and sky – that crooked mirror;

that primal light – and tasted dust of dust

upon her tongue. Exhaustive, extracting

every detail – those finite gasps – clasping

a dead man’s soul between needle, nail

and thumb like a sick oracle

gluing antiquity’s debris.

Enriched at last

through that Anglican appetite for roses

and wolves, she returned to Salterne

and teased her steps across

those shingled shores – each pebble squirming

under the heel of a mind which holds

the crystal truth: history is squalid

and trumped and mean

and honesty in the annals is a gift

won through wars of dirty hands

ransacking time

to puppet rotting corpse fingers

and pitch pretty shadows on the wall.

Now the sea looms impoverished

and the gulls wheedle their dirge,

mocking mourning for such a treasured wit –

that fluent pithy cup; a lip and a pen

which demanded the departed

shake their rust,

collect their spittle,

and now and forever

get up.

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Canto XIII Literary Map of Exeter & Devon connection: Dart River; Alice Oswald 

Canto XIII – The River

“I little thought

That I should ever, at any time,

Over the head, speak, mouthless,

Swap speech.”

-        The Husband’s Message

Winding, spitting, medley

of voices crying, gossiping,

murmuring, spitting, singing,

running on and on and on –

this is the anthem of the river,

and she does not crouch at its bank

recording flora and fauna with Darwin’s eye.

Oswald leaps

and splashes deep

into the fray itself – feeling the chill

kiss her palms, tasting the clarity –

rolling it like a sommelier

on her darting, gardener’s tongue –

somewhere, somehow amidst

the wordy bedlam,

you become I,

and that is perhaps

the greatest gift of poetry;

that in the rush and torrent

of a Devon current, I can listen

to the song of myself and know

the efforts of a crafty bard

can one day become my own – I who

have also walked those sculptured banks

and shared bread and laughter with friends

and almost slipped on that cobbled bed

when crossing the northern leat –

drawing the weight and wisdom

of heritage waters, those droplets

solid and sweet;

there is muscle in a symphony

which can break and heal,

there is revelation in understanding

I am just another note –

one more ringing spoke –

upon the waters’ wheel.

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The Coda

Can you hear it –

were you listening?

The circle; the circles; the circling;

every knocker, every piskie, every birch

and raven and jackdaw and dunnock

and droplet and flower and root

and lark and bluebell and feather

and flea – the chanting salmon,

the whistling sea – the blowing buzzard

and buzzing bee – the rattle of Crow –

the humming lent lily, perhaps

the harping robin, the tattle of

marram grass, or the river’s

weaving, winding, bubbling story?

None so loud as the belting gorse,

conducting its needles and

ringing bells hoarse –

to repeat its sound,

is to make yourself a limb –

just another verse, another circle,

in this ever-curling three hare hymn;

so roll your breath and mark the curdle,

the cycle has once more begun,

upon this earth –

upon this portion –

they run, they run, they run…

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© 2026 Nathan Steward, created with support from Beaford Arts for the Devonshire Association. All rights reserved.

Acknowledgements

There are many people who helped breathe life into this poem. I would like to extend my appreciation to UNESCO, Beaford Arts and the Devonshire Association for securing the bursary funding and being kind enough to direct it toward this wonderful opportunity. It is not just organisations, however, that facilitated the project. I owe much and more to the brilliant individuals who came together to help me research, clarify and compose this piece.

From Beaford Arts and the DA, I want to especially thank Caroline Preston, Simon Timms and Sue Andrew. As my project manager, Caroline - Education Leader at Beaford - acted as not only a reliable and reassuring voice of support for my creative practise but also personally drove and toured me around various literary locations essential for the poem. Without her kind words and proactive support, there is not a chance the poem could exist and flourish in its current form. Simon was the President of the DA when I began my bursary and was utterly invaluable for his vast litany of notes on the authors I had chosen to explore, as well as keeping me updated on local events which could be of use. His encouragement, knowledge, and advice were all of great assistance and his patience and understanding when I required further time was exceptionally comforting during a strenuous period. Sue Andrew – the chair of the DA – was an integral point of contact for my exploration of the ‘Three Hares’. It was her article and lecture which first provided the context I needed, and her kind offer to discuss the Three Hares further with me, as well as show me the Spreyton roof boss, cemented my fascination with the symbol.

I also want to thank Chris Chapman and Carol Hughes, who both helped immensely with my Dartmoor Canto – especially as pertaining to the Ted Hughes portion. My cousin and fellow poet, Anna Selby, was also integral for my understanding of Dartmoor; not only for braving the mud and gorse with me during some truly terrible weather but for also providing a wealth of folkloric titbits for me to incorporate into the piece.

I further wish to thank the writer Stewart Ross – my mentor - who advised me on the formative structure of my piece and was often the first to read sections from the poem and offer constructive advice toward polishing its content. My personal tutor at the University of Exeter, Tim Kendall, was another valuable voice for helping me establish a healthy work life balance, as well as advising me on Thomas Hardy’s Devon presence. 

Finally, I want to extend a large thank you to the various friends and housemates who suffered through the reading aloud of my poetry and aided in transporting me to these locations as well as supplementing me in other areas of my life when the workload became too demanding. Most of them do not enjoy poetry, which I believe makes their contributions and sacrifices all the more remarkable.